Over The Hump

Berlin Airlift 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition

William H. Tunner

OVER THE HUMP

by

WILLIAM H. TUNNER
Lieutenant General, United States Air Force

New Imprint by

AIR
FORCE

nistow

y and — '

Museums

PROGRAM
1998

COPYRIGHT 1964 BY WILLIAM H. TUNNER AND BOOTON HERNDON

All rights reserved. No part of this book in excess of five hundred woids be reproduced in
any form without permission in writing from the publisher.

Permission has been granted for the US. Government Printing Office to reprint this
work for the use of the US. Air Force.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Tunner, William H.
Over the Hump.

Reprint with a new Foreword by the Air Force Historian, Richard P.
Hallion. Originally published: 1st ed. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce,
1964.

Includes index.

1. Airlift, Military— United States— History.

2. United States. Air Force— Transport service— History. 1. Title.
UC333.T85 1985 358.4'4'0973 62-15466

ii

FOREWORD

This book is a classic in the annals of air power history. William Tunner was
a master of airlift operations at a time when die airplane itself was transitioning
from the pre-modem into the modem era. His work encompassed airlift opera-
tions from the era of the Douglas C-47 and C-54, both of which launched major
technological revolutions that dramatically affected subsequent aviation,
through the gestation stage of the modem jet airlifter. Today, the C-17
Globemaster III airlifters that respond to America's needs for prompt and deci-
sive airlift to the crisis points around the globe fly in the wake of the airman of
the Military Air Transport Service and its predecessors that met the challenges
of the Second World War and defeated Soviet intransigence during the Berlin
blockade of 1948-1949. That history offers both lessons and confidence to
national decision-makers and, in particular, to the men and women of the United
States Air Force today as they project power, influence, and presence around the
globe.

It is fitting that we reissue this woik in 1998, the fiftieth anniversary of the
Berlin airlift. The Berlin airlift was the first great challenge — and the first great
humanitarian airlift — ^that the United States Air Force met as an independent ser-
vice. That a prodigious airlift effort accompanied this blockade is evidenced by
the following impressive statistics:

1,783,572.7 tons of supplies delivered,

62,749 passengers flown,

189,963 total flights,

586,827 total flying hours, and

92,061,862 aircraft miles flown by C-47 and C-54 transports.

Sadly, this came at the cost of 31 American fatalities during Berlin airlift
operations, 28 of which were Air Force personnel.

The Berlin airlift was a milestone in the history of military aviation and the
history of the Cold War. Quite simply, had the United States Air Force not met
the challenges of Berlin, the Cold War might have had a very different history,
and Westem Europe might indeed have fallen under Communist thrall. When
Josef Stalin threw down the gauntlet over Berlin, the Air Force never wavered in
its resolve to defeat him. That it did so set the stage for the long European watch
of the Cold War. When the Cold War ended in 1989, it represented the ultimate
triumph and complement to the airlifters of Berlin. It is to them that this edition
of this work is dedicated.

Richard P. Hallion
The Air Force Historian

iii

Acknowledgment

I wish to express my full appreciation to Booton Hemdon
for his invaluable assistance in the research, organization,
and presentation of the material m this book.

William H. Tunner
Lieutenant General, USAF

Contents

I. Early Days 3

II. Ferrying Division 11
m. The Hump 43
IV. The Orient Project 136

V. The Berlin AiiUft 152

VI. Korea 225
Vn. USAFB 265
Vm. MATS 281

IX. Observations and Recommendations 318

Index 333

vii

Illustrations

following page 54

Harold Talbot, General Nathan Twining, General Tunner, and General
Lauris Norstad

British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, General Lucius D. Qay, and
General Tunner

A Chmese Airfield

The India-China Division

An Elephant Demonstrates His Technique

The Veteran C-54

Human Labor in the India-China Command

Evacuation Scene at Syichwan Airfield, China

Construction at Tegel Airfield, Berlin

A U.S. A.F. Hospital in Korea

Time Out for a Smoke at Chanyi Airfield in China

Multicolored Parachutes in the Skies of Northwest Korea

The Taj Mahal

General Tunner with King ibn-Saud of Saudi Arabia and U.S. Ambassador
Wadsworth

General Tunner, Colonel Hamilton Heard, and Colonel Gordon Rust
Retirement Ceremony at Scott A.F.B.

ix

OVER THE HUMP

CHAPTER I

Earl)f Days

One sunny afternoon when I was an eager young second lieu-
tenant at Rockwell Field, near San Diego, California, the Operations
officer sent word that he wanted to see me. I hurried to his office, for a
summons from the Operations officer was one all young flying officers
answered with alacrity, enthusiasm, and hope. It mig^t mean an oppor-
tunity to fly. I entered and reported.

"There's a three-engine Fokker sitting right outside my office there,"
he said, gesturing. '1 want you to take her up to the Sacramento Depot."

"Yes, sir!" I said, turned smartly, and left the office. I'd never flown
a three-engine plane before, and I hurried to it, striding along briskly
in my cavalry boots and riding breeches. We didn't fly planes in those
days, we rode them; we were supposed to get the feeling of the plane
through the seat of our pants. The only difference between the uniform
of a pUot and a cavaky officer was the leather helmet we substituted
for the campaign hat. Oh, yes — and we left our sabers behind. I was
just a little more than a year out of West Pomt then, and a month or
so out of flying school. At Rockwell Field Td been flying the old LB-3,
or Keystone Bomber, which thundered along at seventy miles an hour,
and I felt proud and elated and fortunate indeed at this opportunity to
fly the sleek, powerful, speedy plane I was approaching. I had never
been inside one before, but Fd heard from other pilots who had flown
the Fokker that she was a wonderful ship. Even if she hadn't been, of
course, it would have been a thrill to fly her. Young flim in those days,
I imagme, were much like young doctors. We were always eager to see
new and different cases, and operate on them if anybody would let us.
We'd fly anything — ^new or old, in good shape or bad (we knew very
little about maintenance, and cared less) both for the sheer exhilaration

3

4 / OVER THE HUMP

of it, and to birild up our flying time. And now here was this beauty
waiting for me.

No matter how eager I was to climb aboard and get started, I never-
theless carried out the usual preflight checks, and in a very proficient
manner, too. I was certainly no engineer, either mechanical or aeronau-
tical. I wasn't at all mechanically inclined. But I knew enough to walk
slowly around the airplane, counterclockwise, looking for oil leaks or
loose wires or cables. I jiggled the ailerons, rudder, and elevator to test
their mobility, and kicked the tires for good measure. Then I stepped in
the plane, looked into the cabin, and immediately froze.

A dozen pallid faces were looking back at me. Nobody had told me
there were going to be passengers aboard. We stared at each other for
a long moment. They certainly did not seem happy. At the time the
public image of the all-American pilot was a cool and nonchalant old-
timer with a weather-beaten face and piercing eyes, narrowed, with
CTow's feet in the comers from years of peering into the blue. The eager,
shining face of a twenty-three-year-old second lieutenant could hardly
have inspired my passengers with confidence.

There was no pilot experienced on the Fokker around to explain the
dials and gadgets to me, but a mechanic was waiting. He pointed out
such interesting things as the ignition switches, gas gauge, oil tempera-
ture and oil pressure gauges, and the gasoline tank switches for getting
gas out of the different tanks. My complete briefing on this trimotored
plane whose cockpit I was seeing for the first time was only a few min-
utes. Then he left— he wasn't flying.

I ducked into the office to get a clearance, but this only took a minute.
I was not required to make a flight plan; there was no weaflier informa-
tion, and tiie only map available was a Rand McNally California State
map. Back in the plane, I did tiie same tilings I would have done witii
tile slow old two-engine bombers— started tiie engines, warmed up tiie
oil, checked tiie oil pressure and the revolutions per minute of each
engine, and tested tiie wheel and rudders to see if tiiere was any hitch
in tiie controls. Everytiiing seemed in fine shape, so I slowly taxied out
onto tiie field. It was just an expanse of dirt and sand— no runways at
all— and I proceeded on out until I was in a position to take off into
tiie wind. There I revved up tiie engines to tiieir fuU speed again, and
checked oil pressure and temperature, tiie ignition on each engine, and

Early Days / 5

the fluctuating gas gauge. Again, everything was just fine. There was
nothing further to do but take off. I glanced around to make sure I had
the field and the air above all to myself, and gave her the gas slowly.
The plane raised to the air beautifully. I climbed, circling North Island,
where we were based in San Diego's harbor, looked down disdainfully
at the Navy surface shipping in the harbor, and continued to climb
slowly, headed north. I flew up the coast, oyer Los Angeles, and then
crossed over the Tehachapi Mountains north of the city. It was the first
time I had flown over them alone, and the scenery was ruggedly beau-
tiful. On to Bakersfield, Tulare, and Fresno, and then up the San
Joaquin Valley due north for Sacramento. It was a fine day for flying,
and the ship handled like a dream. The three engines pulled us swiftly
through the air at ahnost one hundred miles an hour. And think of the
added safety factor! Why, if one engine went out, you still had two left.
It was as safe as being in church, but not so safe that I did not con-
tinuaUy and constantly keep a lookout ahead for any emergency landing
places. If there was any one rule in flying, it was to know, every second,
where you were going to land if you had to. A flight was not so much
from San Diego to Sacramento as it was from this pasture here to that
cornfield there to whatever that flat place was up ahead. You felt as
though you were trying to steal second base when you lost sight of a
field.

The trip, some 430 air miles, as I recall, measured on the road map,
took about five happy hours. What a lucky, lucky guy I was, I thought
as we cruised along. Not too many years before I'd been just another
earnest and ambitious boy with eyes on the stars but no means of trans-
portation.

One of five children, I was aware of the financial strain on my parents
in educating us. One sister had akeady been put through teachers' col-
lege, two older brothers were in a local college, and I was to be next.
My father was a newcomer to America, and although he had studied
engineering at the school founded by his ancestor at Leoben in his native
Austria, there was then not the demand for this profession that there is
today. It would take some kind of a miracle to put me through college
without putting a further strain on my father or adding to my mother's
financial worries.

And then in my high school civics class in Roselle, New Jersey, one

6 / OVER THE HUMP

day, when I was fifteen years old, I read of that miracle in my textbook.
The book said that the United States of America mamtained a military
academy on the Hudson River where a boy could get a free college
education if he was appointed by his congressman, I looked up from
the page with a new hope. It was like coming out of the clouds to find
a landing field right ahead. I wrote my Congressman, Ernest R. Acker-
man of the Fifth District of New Jersey, asking for information on how
to get appointed to West Point. Fortunately for me, Congressman- Acker-
man made his appomtments on a competitive basis. From then on I
crammed. I studied at home and used my scheduled study periods to
attend extra classes. I never thought it at all unusual that I would work
so hard for a free education; if I thought about it at aU, I probably won-
dered why everybody else did not. When the tune came to take the
examination I got the highest grade, and entered the Academy at
seventeen.

Four years later, when graduation time came around, my classmates
and I talked endlessly about what branch of the service we wanted to
enter on graduation. There were the Infantry, Cavaky, Field Artillery,
Coast Artillery, the Corps of Engmeers, the Signal Corps, and Quarter-
master Corps. Each had advantages, each had disadvantages, and we
discussed them mterminably. I knew what I wanted. In our senior year
the Academy gave us a week at MitcheU Field on Long Island, where
we were told something about the Air Corps and were taken up several
times. I rode in five different planes, as I recall, and though I was never
permitted to touch the controls, I still remember each flight as a thrilling
experience. No tricks, no stunts, nothing but just striaight flying, but that
was enough for me. Man could fly. I was the subjective proof of that
electrifying statement. From then on there was no question in my mind.
Sure, the Air Corps was considered the lunatic fringe, but the extra pay
and additional opportunities for travel more than made up for that. On
the other hand, the washout rate was hi^: seven out of ten officers failed
to make the grade.

Of the seventy-seven West Point graduates who chose the Air Corps
that year, however, fifty-five of us went on to receive our wings and to
be permanently assigned to the Air Corps. I was one of them, and the
first thing I did on receiving my wings was to confess my choice to my
parents. I had kept it from them until then. It made them feel a little

Early Days j 7

easier to know that I had been flying for a whole year and had obviously
lived through it.

I came out of flying school even more enthusiastic about flying than I
had been when I went in. For one thing, it had been a constant competi-
tion—I against the instructors — and winning my wings made them mean
a little more. For another, I just plain loved flying. It was a terrific thrill
to get up in an airplane, all by yourself, and realize that you could fly.
It was a feeling of mastery. You could put those planes in steep banks
or graceful chandelles and, with your own hands at the controls, defy
gravity.

And finally, the $62 extra we received for flying pay came in handy.
We were in the depths of the depression, and the $125 salary of a second
lieutenant had just been cut by 15 per cent.

And so I had reported to my first Army station, Rockwell Field, in
cavaky breeches and ridmg boots. And this trip, to Sacramento in the
Fokker, was one of my rewards.

I brought the plane down at the Sacramento Depot just as the sun was
setting in the west. It had been a smooth, pleasant trip all the way. No
one got sick; as far as I know, no one was ever scared. I taxied the plane
up to the hangar, cut the engines, opened up the door, and let my pas-
sengers out. They all had big grins on their faces; they were seasoned
air passengers now. I received their thanks and returned their salutes in
a very businesslike way, as though I flew passengers around all the time.

One grizzled old infantry sergeant who'd obviously been around a
long time came up and said, "Thank you for the ride, Lieutenant. It's
the best one I ever had."

"Oh, have you flown much?" I asked him brightly.

"No, sir," he said, grinning. "This was the first time I was ever in an
auT)lane in my life."

It probably did not occur to me then that for the first time in my avia-
tion or military career I had engaged in air transport. I had flown people
from one place to another.

Only in retrospect does that pleasant afternoon over California be-
come symbolic. For there was certamly no way for that young bomber
pilot to know that he was going on to fly, as commandmg officer directly
responsible for the operation, more men and more cargo over greater

8 / OVER THE HUMP

distances than anyone else in the history of aviation, past, present, and
for a long time to come.

Though I thought nothing of my first transport flight then, I have cer-
tainly recaUed it many times over the years since, particularly when put-
ting m motion elaborate and complex programs to make sure that no
other pUot or crew member of an airplane under my command would be
checked out with such casualness. I have sent tens of thousands of pilots
out on hundreds of thousands of missions, and a good portion of my com-
mand function has been to see that tiiese men were rigorously trained and
meticulously checked out to fly a specific airplane over a specific route,
and that the plane would get them there.

Not every man is lucky enough to see the development of an entirely
new concept during his lifetime. I have had the extreme good fortune
not only to have seen, but to have had a hand iit-«ll witiiin tiie short
span of one miKtary career— tiie development of miHtary air transport
from absolute zero to a major and significant role in tiie mifitary power
of America and the free world.

It all developed gradually. There had been, in tiie Thirties, an air
to-ansport outfit of sorts, operating a few C-36's and C-39's, forerunners
of tiie great C-47. But ahr tiransport as we know it today began witii tiie
Ferrying Command, to which I was tiie tiiird officer assigned, and grew,
from tiie occasional movement of one airplane by one pilot, to a highly
complex operation under my command, in which tiiousands of pUots,
miHtary and dvifian, men and women, have delivered planes of aU kinds
an ov&[ the world.

Then came tiie operation over tiie Hnnalaya Mountains known as flie
Hump Airlift. We flew tiiat airlift over tiie highest mountains in tiie
world, in good weatiier or bad, over large areas of territory inhabited by
tiie enemy and by savage tribes, even head-hunters, and witii a confusmg
variety of planes. Through tiiis airlift, and it alone, we kept sixty tiiou-
sand American soldiers and nineteen Chinese armies sufficientiy weU
supplied to tie down over a million and a half Japanese soldiers in China
—enemy soldiers we would otiierwise have had to fight in tiie islands of
tiie Soutii Pacific. AU tiie Pacific campaigns, tough enough as tiiey were,
would have been tiiat much more costiy in American lives. We flew
ahnost a miUion tons of cargo over tiiat "Hump" and into China, includ-

Early Days / 9

ing food, ammunition, and gasoline, mules and steam rollers, and four
Chinese armies.

After the hot war came a political period in our national history of
cutting the military establishment to the bone, quickly and effectively.
No part of that establishment was hit harder than air transport. Yet it
was air transport which was called on m one of the first episodes of the
new international situation known as the cold war, the Russian blockade
of West Berlin. In 1948 military experts all over the world thought that
West Berlin was lost to the free world, lost forever. Two and a half
million people had to have supplies to survive — primarily food to eat,
coal for warmth and Ught — and yet every surface route was closed to
them. We moved into that situation with the BerUn Airlift. It lasted over
thirteen months; in the last four months we were flying nine hundred
round trips a day, delivering tiie necessities of life to the people of one
of the world's largest cities. Nor was it all one-way traffic. To give one
example, at the same time we were flying coal into Berlin, small locomo-
tives manufactured in city factories for use in coal mines were being
flown out to increase production of the coal we were flying in.

In the shooting war in Korea, we maintained two distinct air-supply
operations. One, the longest airlift ever flown, brought supplies and
troops from the United States across the Pacific to Japan. The other
separate operation shutfled these supplies and troops to Korea. At one
time an advancing, fighting army was supplied by Air Transport alone.
In the tragic days following the unexpected counterattack by the Chinese
at the Chosin Reservoir, the dead and wounded and frostbitten were
flown out by transports landing and taking off under fire, and the retreat-
ing army supplied with bullets and even a steel bridge.

Since Korea the world has seen many airlifts. Unquestionably there
will be several, heralded or unheralded, going on as you read this. Our
Military Air Transport Service (MATS), which was my last command,
flies airlifts continuously, both humanitarian and strategic. Following the
1956 Hungarian uprising so brutally put down by Communist forces,
MATS aklifted over fourteen thousand Hungarian refugees to safety
and freedom m the United States. When crisis loomed in Lebanon, it was
MATS that aurlifted troops to that littie country, supplied them until the
danger was over, then brought them back. It was MATS that delivered
the necessary goods when trouble brewed in the Taiwan Strait over the

10 / OVBR THE HUMP

little islands of Quemoy and Matsu. Its activities have been on steady
increase. In the faU of 1962, for example, m addition to carrying out
routine duties including global aurlifts, MATS was called upon in rapid
succession to fly federal troops to Mississippi to maintam order, fly
soldiers and Marines and material to assembly areas in Horida and
Guantanamo for tiie Cuban situation, and deliver aid to India, under
attack by Communist China.

MATS can be termed tiie bellweflier of international trouble. For
when trouble breaks out, it must of necessity be MATS which first re-
sponds to tiie emergency caH. MATS must have tiie planes ready before
flie Marines or paratroopers can get in tiiem. Thus MATS trains 365
days a year; it is always ready for D-Day.

From my experience of many years in tiie old Air Transport Com-
mand, as commander of MATS in 1958-1960, and as commander of flie
tiJree greatest airlifts m history—tiie Hump, Berlin, and Korea— I want
to give m tiiis book tiie first over-all picture of what we accomplished
and how it was done. From tiie Hump on I have been convinced fliat
we can carry anytiiing anywhere anytime.

CHAPTER II

Ferrying Division

World War II saw the rapid development of every phase of
modem warfare, on the groxmd, at sea, and in the air, and since it ended
many volumes have been written on particular areas of the military art.
Little, however, has been written of one military service vital to the
prosecution of modem war, that comprising the transport of materiel by
air and the delivery of airplanes themselves from the factory to the com-
bat zone. It is a story of many facets, of continuing developments which
vitally affect the civilized world today.

In the very first month of the organization set up to perform that new
service, the positive fact became dear that, just as the use of the air-
plane as a tactical weapon requires a special expertise and just as the
use of the airplane as a strategic weapon requires a special expertise, so,
too, does the use of tiie airplane to transport war materiel and the de-
livery of the planes themselves to where they can be used against the
enemy require a special expertise. It was true in 1941, and it is true
today.

We have come so far, learned so much about military air transport,
and have so thoroughly proved its worth, as in the Hump, the Korean,
and Berlin Airlifts, that it seems almost incredible that up until three
o'clock in the afternoon of May 29, 1941, there was no organization of
any kind in American military aviation to provide for either delivery of
planes or air transport of materiel. By the end of that day, the Air Corps
Ferrying Command, which grew into the Air Transport Command, with
its major component the Ferrying Division, was in existence with an
assigned military personnel of two. Four years later, in Jime, 1944, when
the activity of the Ferrying Division reached its peak — and I had ad-
vanced from personnel officer with the rank of major to its conunanding

11

12 / OVER THE HUMP

general— I had a total personnel of fifty Otousand, military and civilian,
under my command, including some eighty-five hundred pilots.

By the end of the war, the Ferrying Division had delivered 21,092
planes to foreign destinations and made 291,525 domestic ferrying move-
ments. Its regular routes circled the world. Lines radiated out from the
continental United States in every direction: South to Natal, Brazil, then
east over Ascension Island to the coast of Africa, thence on across the
vast expanse of Central Africa, to the Middle East, Russia, or India;
north to Alaska for deliv^ to the Russians, or up through Newfound-
land, even Greenland, thence to Europe; east to Europe, by way of the
Azores, and west to the Central and South Pacific.

There were transport routes, too, with regularly scheduled flights
opwating day and night. Before the war, remember, what few overseas
airlmes there were flew only in daylight. Our planes roared on their
missions, cairymg vital suppUes to the fighting fronts, retummg the sick
and wounded to the hospitals nearest their homes on a constant, round-
the-clock schedule. Many of those routes planned and laid out in war-
time are stiU being used today, both by the miUtary and by civil airlines.
Many of our achievements of tiiose hectic days, m short, continued on
after the war, providing safe, spee<ty, and economical transportation t<x
civilians as well as for the military.

Furtiiermore, during tiiose years, tiirough tiieir own determination to
do tiie best job tiiey could wifli what tiiey had to do it witii, experts m
tiie completely new field of sat tiansport, were developed, as well as
much of the know-how in aviation today, botii commercial and military.
Out of tiie tiragedy of tiie war came knowledge and experience that
would have taken many more years to amass in times of peace.

I was in on tiie development of tiiis completely new field from tiie
beginnmg on to well past tiie pomt where we had our major problems
licked. I was tiie tiiird officer assigned to tiie new command. At tiiat
time the United States Air Corps had no transport planes. No airplane
had ever been delivered across the sea, and world-wide tiravel by air was
in its infancy.

The events which pushed me into this challengmg new field had begun
one sunny day in Memphis, in 1939, die day Major Victor Beau came
out from Washington to inspect tiie happy little detachment I was run-
ning there. As we walked over tiie layout togetiier and saw tilings appar-

Ferrying Division / 13

enfly getting done, then went back to my office where I was, thanks to
a seven-day week, all caught up with my paper work, I noticed the gleam
in the Major's eyes getting brighter and brighter. But I didn't realize
what that meant imtil it was too late.

My litde kmgdom was known officially as the Memphis Air Corps
Detachment, and it was a pleasant place to be. First of all, I was on my
own; I was the only officer on permanent duty there. I had a sergeant
and some fifteen enlisted men and a civilian secretary, and occasionally
a reserve officer would come to spend his two weeks on active duty and
help out, but in general, the problems and responsibilities were mme, all
mine, and so were the accomplishments. When I first went to Memphis,
a captain with eleven years service, the only thing that awaited me was
one empty hangar. Five airplanes of assorted types had been promised
by Air Corps headquarters, but they hadn't arrived.

One of my first duties was to hu:e a secretary. I called the local civil
service office and was given several names. I called on down the list,
and, inasmuch as the day happened to be a Friday and I wanted to get
started as soon as possible, requested that applicants come out to the
field for an interview on either Saturday or Sunday. That eluninated a
few right there. One of those who did come out, on Sunday afternoon,
was Miss Catherine Gibson. She seemed most proficient and intelligent,
not to mention independent.

"Of course," I warned her during the interview, "we're a few miles
out of Memphis, and you will have to make arrangements to get here
yourself."

"Tell me, captain," she said sweetly, "just how do you think I got
here this Sunday afternoon?"

I learned later that she never expected to hear from me agam. Actu-
ally, I called her bright and early the next mommg and asked her to
come to work. Miss Katie was to be with me on and off for over twenty
years, at home and abroad, whenever it was possible for me to have a
secretary. Through the years many men and women, fuimeling through
my office, have come to know this loyal and capable assistant with re-
spect and affection.

I worked long and hard at Memphis, my first command, but every
minute of it was a pleasure, because I could see the results of what I was
doing. My primary job was in the building up of a flying reserve corps

14 / OVER THE HUMP

by interesting young civilian pilots in becoming reserve oflScers in the
Air Corps. One of the first I signed up was a young fellow named Red
Forman, who ran a skating rink in town and did a little flying weekends.
At this writing Brigadier General Robert D. Forman is commander of
MATS in Europe.

Another of my jobs was to see to it that military planes stopping in
on trips east or west, north or south, received prompt and efficient main-
tenance, and the right grade of gasoline and oil. With a good crew of
mechanics well provided for, and a supply section that functioned well
under firm supervision, I was able to get these duties carried out with
a performance record which was routinely high.

At the time I had no idea why I, just another one of a few thousand
Air Corps captains, should have been given such a delightful job. Since
that time I have assigned a few thousand officers to various assignments,
and I can see some reason for packing up Captain Tunner and sending
him to that empty hangar in Memphis. On the basis of my military back-
ground, I was practically polarized for the job.

rd learned the secret of paper work back at Rockwell Field, years
before. At that time the Army was working only a half day. Officers
would perform thek routine tasks in the morning, take off for lunch, and
be through for the day. Everybody, that is, but the Air Corps. The brass
didn't quite know what to do with us. We drilled like everybody else,
we had the same paper work as everybody else, and on top of that we
flew. I drilled in the morning and flew in the morning, which meant,
if you can imagine such an indignity, that I had to do my paper work —
I was adjutant — ^in the afternoon. The quicker I got the job done, the
sooner I could join the other officers at the swunming pool or on the
golf course. I found that when I got right down to my papers, dull as
they were, and did the job instead of moaning about it, I could accom-
plish in an hour or less the work other officers were spendmg the entire
morning on.

After Rockwell Field I had four years as a flying instructor at Ran-
dolph Field. It was easy work, and I couldn't help but learn a little about
human nature above the ground. From there I went to the Panama Canal
Zone — ^and a different Army. There was no half day at Panama. For one
thing, the area around the canal has always been sensitive. For another,
Hitler was now beginning to be recognized as a future menace to the

Ferrying Division / 15

peace of the world, and Germany was seeking to increase its influence
in Central and South America. We were on our toes* there.

The mission of the Air Corps in Panama was to defend the Canal
Zone by bombing enemy ships. My duties included running the Anti-
Aircraft Intelligence Service, or AAIS. This consisted of detachments of
men, equipped with radio sets, located along the coasts of Panama.
Radar was still unknown. The idea, of course, was to spot hostile planes
and give warning by radio. The word was flashed from set to set, down
the coast, until it reached the military officials in the Canal Zone. We
ran exercises constantly, but we rarely got word that a bomber was
approaching until we could look up and see it. However, the idea was
basically sound.

Thanks to my reputation with paper work back at Rockwell Field,
I was rewarded with more of it in Panama. At Rockwell I had done a
dull job efficiently in order to get it over with; in Panama I gave it my
best because it was fascinating. I was operations officer, and my admin-
istrative work dealt entirely with flying, particularly the schedulmg of
flights. Even after starting out at 7 a.m. in the morning with close-order
drill, I didn't nund coming to the office, unbuckling my saber, and work-
ing the rest of the day on operations. I found out there was a lot more
to flying than simply boring holes through the sky. Neither planes nor
men could fly constantly. Planes required maintenance, men required
rest. Schedules of both had to be planned assiduously in order to have
planes ready to fly at the same time crews were available to fly them.

We worked closely with the Army in the Canal Zone, trying to evade
the anti-aircraft searchlights and tracking stations, towing targets for the
anti-aircraft guns, as well as flying bombing and reconnaissance. I be-
came so interested in this work that I asked for, and got, three years at
Fort Benning as operations chief of an Air Corps unit workhig with
ground forces. After that, and a three-month course at Maxwell Field,
I went to Memphis with a well-rounded education and two silver bars to
take over one empty hangar. Incredible as it may seem today, incidentally,
that hangar was the property of Memphis, built at the city's own expense
and loaned to the Air Corps as a friendly and patriotic gesture. This
presentation, exactly the opposite of what we have come to expect over
the postwar years, was typical of the hospitality the city gave us.

Although there were not a great many civilian pilots in any one com-

16 / OVER THE HUMP

munity in 1939, in my entire area — ^northern Mississippi and Louisiana,
Tennessee and Arkansas— there were quite a few. I got in touch with
them all — airline pilots, weekend fliers, crop dusters — and invited them
to join the Air Corps. By today's standards, I had little to offer the new
men. They received no pay whatsoever, except for the two weeks of
active duty they could pull every year, and that would barely pay for
their uniforms. But we had much more than a government payroll. We
had camaraderie, the spirit of adventure, an intense love of flying, and
the desire to make this technical skill available to the United States.
After I got a few fellows in, the growth of the detachment snowballed.
I made frequent flights, to New Orleans or Atlanta, or even to Washing-
ton, and I always took along one of the new Reserve second lieutenants
as copilot. This was the greatest reward I could tender. The idea of fly-
ing somewhere with government gas was m itself a thrill. And when
we*d get up above the clouds, or even fly at night, so that we could fly
on instruments, to a weekend pilot who had previously flown only by
visual rules and the seat of his pants this was new and different and
stimulating. Wherever we went or whatever we did, there was an adven-
ture of some kind. One time over Mississippi an oil line burst, and the
entire interior of the plane, as well as my young copilot and I, were
immediately covered, and covered all over, with oil. The windshield was
smeared completely. I had to wipe my oily face with my oily hand and
roll down the window and stick my head out in order to see. I brought
the plane down in a rough but safe landing in a cotton patch, and my
copilot and I climbed out. We looked at each other, two oil-soaked,
miserable-looking creatures, and roared with laughter and relief. You
can bet that we all talked about that one for weeks.

Memphis was a constant chsdlenge, constant adventure, constant fun.
Actually, it was a whole base m miniature. I had sixty-five monthly re-
ports to fill out, including those of the base commander, operations
officer, adjutant, supply officer. I had the same problems that the com-
mander of any large base would have, but less, of course, in content, and
I could handle them in my own tune and in my own way.

Anyway, things were going along fine that day Major Beau came in
from Washington to look us over. On toward the end of the day, after
I had proudly shown him everything good that we'd done, he looked at
me speculatively and said:

Ferrying Division / 17
"Say, Bill, how'd you like to come to Washington?"
Without thinking, I said, "Frankly, sir, there's nothing I'd hate more."
Within a month I was there.

I have always dreaded working in Washington. It is confining and frus-
trating. In Washington, whether in Ak Corps headquarters then or the
Pentagon now, a man in the armed services rarely indeed sees the accom-
plishments of his work. He can work for weeks, months, even years on
a project and never see any materialization of it. He can reach an impor-
tant decision, arrived at only after much staff work and thought, and
never know what effect his decision made, if it made any at all. He can't
see the airplanes fly or the people move or change direction. And when
you get caught up in one of the mter-service rivahries, your most vigor-
ous action is like punching a pillow.

The unportant job for which I left Memphis turned out to be sitting
in an office writmg orders moving airplanes around. I had nothing to do
with who went where; I merely took the memorandum concerning the
airplane, found a driver among the sixteen hundred pilots then in the
Anr Corps, then wrote an official order telling him to fly it from where
it was to where it was supposed to go. It was about as boring a job as
it is possible to get, but yet it did have one advantage. Many of the
orders I wrote would direct an officer to proceed to the West Coast,
pick up a plane at one of the aircraft factories there, and fly it back to
one of the fields in the Southeast Sometimes there was no officer avail-
able, and so, with an O.K. from my boss. Colonel Asa Duncan, I began
ordering myself to go. About three times a month I'd take the American
Airlines sleeper plane— an extinct luxury today— out of Washington at
6 P.M. Friday and arrive m Los Angeles around eight o'clock Saturday
morning. A representative of the akoraft factory would meet me at the
airport, and drive me to the plane. Most often it would be a basic tramer
to be delivered to a flying school near Macon, Georgia, or Montgomery,
Alabama, or somewhere in the South. If it were a new model or a more
complicated job, I would try to read some of the specifications on it,
or at least have the factory representative show me around the plane.
I'd take it up, circle the field once, and land it before starting out for my
destination. I'd usually manage to get away by 9 A.M., and have an
enjoyable flight across country, sometimes even stopping in to see what
was going on at Memphis. Fd reach Macon, say, Sunday evening, get a

18 / OVER THE HUMP

ride to Atlanta, and take the airlines plane out for Washington that night.
I never missed being home in bed by midnight, and back at my desk at
eight o^clock Monday morning. A weekend of flying, and all without
missing a mmute's work at the office. I made these trips entirely for fun,
with no idea that I'd someday be in the ferrying business, where this
experience would prove helpful.

Being in the plane delivery business myself, if only on a weekend
basis, I was beguming to feel some concern over the problem of interna-
tional plane delivery to our friends overseas. That was the bleak summer
in which the Batfle of Britam began. Each day the news of destruction
and horror which filled the papers seemed worse. People returning from
London verified the carnage. England needed everythmg we could send.
Indeed, fear was officially expressed that unless we accelerated the de-
livery of akcraft to Britain they might not arrive in time to be of any
use. Yet our Neutrality Act was in force at the time to such an extent
that in order to get planes into Canada and thence to the United King-
dom without breaking the law, we actually had to push, rather than fly,
the planes across the Canadian border.

The British organized the Atlantic Ferrymg Organization, called
Atfero and composed largely of Americans, to fly the larger airplanes
across the North Atlantic. This was daring indeed in 1940, but the
British were desperate. They paid tiie Atfero pilots fifteen hundred dol-
lars a month, a fantastic sum in those days.

After passage of flie Lend-Lease Act in March, 1941, top Air Corps
officers began planning ways in which we could help deliver planes to
Britain, and at the same time train more pilots for our own eventual
ferry use. General H, H. Arnold, after a trip to England m which he
discussed the matter with his British counterparts, called the whole
problem to the attention of President Roosevelt On May 28, 1941, a
letter went out from the White House to the Secretary of War. Certainly
a broad and sweeping document, it reads as follows:

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I wish you would take the full responsibility for delivering planes,
other than the PBYs, that are to be flown to England to the point
of iiltimate take-ofi.

I am convinced that we can speed up the process of getting these
bombers to England and I am anxious to cut through all of the

Ferrying Division / 19

formalities that are not legally prohibitive and help the British get
this job done with dispatch.

I think that Lend-Lease funds can be used to sonie extent in
connection with fields in Canada and Bermuda.

For your confidential information I am suggesting that the
R.A.F. take the responsibility for the planes at the point of ulti-
mate take-off but whether this suggestion of mine is approved by
the British Government or not I want the Army to make sure that
these planes are delivered speedily.

Very sincerely yours,
/s/ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The very next day Colonel Robert Olds was assigned to set up the
Ferrymg Command. The selection of Colonel Olds m itself underlmed the
importance of the job. He was a World-War-I pilot who had made a
great name for himself in military aviation. He had commanded the
famous Friendship Flight of six B-17's to Buenos Aires and back. He
was a forceful and independent man; he'd speak up to officers of higher
rank ahnost as quickly as he'd blister a subordinate. He suffered with
arthritis, and on the days when his swollen joints pained hun exceed-
ingly he was even more irascible. But Olds was no cripple. He had
energy to burn, on and off the job. He loved high living, and he loved
women, too, for that matter; he'd been married four times by that time.
He drove himself furiously and within a year he was a major general.
Within another year he was dead. He'd given all he had.

Olds attacked the problem of the Ferrymg Command in his typical
direct and tape-cutting fashion. He secured his first subordinate, Major
Edward H. Alexander, that very afternoon. May 29, and I was next. I did
not know Colonel Olds at the time, and I made no effort to escape. Any-
thmg, I thought then, would be better than writing orders all day long;
I would be getting closer to the war.

Olds had been given, for his important new command, a section of
the basement in the munitions building. We moved the musty files out
of the way ourselves, cleared space for a few desks, and had lights put
in. There was one dingy window; it opened up on the platform where
the cafeteria kept its garbage cans. Colonel Olds had a glass partition
built, which gave him some privacy and a little more prestige, but the
rest of us worked from our desks in the cleared-out area for months.

20 / OVER THE HUMP

At the begmning we had tremendous power. One of our first direc-
tives, for example, signed by Major General E. S. Adams, adjutant
general of the Army and not an Air Corps officer, was included in a
letter addressed to all conmianding generals of all armies on the subject
of "The Constitution of the Air Corps Ferrying Command." One sen-
tence in it read: "The chiefs of arms and services, commanding officers
of posts, camps and stations and other agencies under War Department
jurisdiction are directed to give first priority to the activities of the Air
Corps Ferrying Conunand when the assistance or cooperation is re-
quired." Thus, if anybody was ferrying an aircraft across country and
stopped in at an Army Air Corps base, all he had to do was wave this
durective around and everybody on the base had to stop work and take
care of that airplane. Bob Olds was the only one who ever did produce
it. He was dynamic and demanding^ and he loved to wave the directive
around until he got whatever he wanted.

To determine the routes by which we would get our planes overseas,
Olds brought in Colonel Caleb V. Haynes, like himself one of aviation's
most famous pilots. Haynes took off July 1, 1941, on the Command's
fijrst Transatlantic flight In a B-24 roughly converted to a transport
plane, he proceeded to Prestwick, Scotland, via Montreal and Gander,
Newfoundland, and returned. The trip was made in complete secrecy.
All members of the crew received the Distinguished Flying Cross. Within
months such flights became routine.

Haynes also broke in our southern route via Brazil, thence over the
narrowest point of the South Atlantic to Takoradi, on the Gold Coast. His
copilot was a major named Curtis LeMay, now chief of staff of the United
States Air Force.

In the meantime Olds was taking advantage of every opportunity to
develop other airlanes. When two B-24's piloted by Major Alva T.
Harvey and First Lieutenant Louis T. Reichers were sent to Moscow
on a special mission, Olds took it on himself to bring them back home
by diverse routes. Reichers flew south to Iraq, then across Africa to
Takoradi. Harvey proceeded on around the world, via India, southeast
Asia, Australia, New Guinea, Wake Island, and Hawaii. Thus our knowl*
edge of the world was expanding, to be followed by the continual expan-
sion and increase of our actual flying operations.

My job, originally, was getting pilots and crew members to fly the

Ferrying Division / 21

steadily increasing number of planes to their destinations at home and
abroad. A directive from the chief of the Air Corps, signed by Colonel
George E. Stratemeyer, executive, concluded with the sentence: "Any
deficiency of pilots for ferrying crews will be made up at present by the
Army Air Corps, which includes all pilots of the Air Corps, mcluding
the GHQ." With this directive we could reach into any Air Corps com-
mand and pluck all the pilots we wanted. I attempted to fill our ranks
with National Guard and Reserve pUots, to avoid disrupting other reg-
ular commands, but there just weren't enougih. It became necessary to
ask that pilots from tactical units be loaned to us.

Everything pertaining to those pilots and the pilots we already had
and the training of new pilots was passing through my hands.

Saturday and Sunday I would spend at our special training school for
four-engine crews at Albuquerque, New Mexico. The school was set up
and administered by TWA, and I was the only Ferrying Command officer
they saw. It was at this school that we developed crews to ferry the big
beasts across the country, and eventually over the oceans.

The other five mornings a week began with a load of work that would
take until midnight, not including the fantastic orders the Olds daily staff
meeting usually produced. It was obvious that the Command was akeady
too centralized. As Olds preferred to make the broad policy directives,
working with the top levels of the government, rather than sit in this
smelly basement office and be an administrator, just about every routine
decision came to me.

In making one important decision I took a leaf from the boss's book.
It involved a ridiculous situation which had been permitted to develop
through lack of some central headquarters on the West Coast. Once
their delivery had been made, pilots would report back to the same fac-
tory for another job. It frequently happened that at one factory pilots
would be sitting around waiting for planes to come off the production
line while at the same time planes would be ready and waiting at another
factory with no pilots to fly them. What we needed was a base on the
West Coast for the continuous cross-training and administration of these
pilots, but I also knew that the last thing Olds wmted was a base to
administer. After serving under him for just a few months, however, I
absorbed some of his own methods, such as just going ahead and doing
what seemed right. The opportunity arose the day Major General George

22 / OVER THE HUMP

H. Brett, then acting Chief of the Air Corps, called from the West Coast.
Olds was out and I took the call.

"You've got everything m a mess out here," the general roared.
"YouVe got these pilots all scattered around and nobody knows who is
doing what. They're not cross-tramed, and they're just milling around."

"Yes, sir," I said. "If we could have the Long Beach Reserve base
assigned to us then we could get all these pilots together under a com-
manding officer and a staff. That base is near all the factories, and we
could set up a cross-traming program. We could maintain some sense
of co-ordination instead of having too few pilots at one place, too many
at another."

"That's a good idea," the general said. "You've got the base."

When Colonel Olds came back, and I told him that he now had a
base to oversee and how we got it, he became furious. But this was the
only way we could possibly accomplish anything with any degree of
efficiency. As it was, I worked twelve to fifteen hours a day, seven days
a week. Two years after Pearl Harbor, Christmas Day, 1943, 1 took my
first day off.

By December that first year, we had the semblance of a headquarters,
and our pilots were flying planes in a steady procession to Montreal.
But unmediately after Pearl Harbor all ferrying stopped with a bang.
Every pilot we had borrowed from any other unit, except the National
Guard and Reserve, was ordered to return to his command, and to re-
turn immediately. On that day we had twenty airplanes actually en route
across the country in the hands of regular tactical pilots. They were
ordered to put the planes down at the nearest field and get themselves
to their home base immediately, I was acting as executive officer of the
Ferrying Command at that time (Alexander had gone to Chma for a
month and didn't get back for two years) and I protested as strongly as
I could, but without success. There was a great fear that the Japanese
would keep coming, and a consequent rush to ship troops and airplanes
to the West Coast to repel the invasion. Some of our pilots were on the
West Coast or proceeding there when the orders came down, and they
had to hiury in the wrong direction as a consequence. By the time many
pilots ordered to the Coast arrived there, it had become obvious that
there were no airplanes for them to fly. Pilots who had been grounded
en route were then ordered to go back and complete the deliveries, but

Ferrying Division / 23

after that the Ferrying Command was left with only the handful of pilots
we had gotten from the National Guard and the Reserves.

It was obvious that the plane-ferrying business was in for a great
expansion. We had to have pilots, but it was now obvious that we were
not going to get them from the military. Fortunately, from my experience
in Memphis I knew that there were many pilots, good pilots, out there
in the civilian world. I had the idea that they would rather deliver planes
for us than be drafted into the infantry. I put out word that we intended
to hure as many civilian pilots as we could get, and then began negotiat-
ing with the Civil Service Bureau as to just how we were going to do it.
The Bureau finally decided on a rating which would give a pilot three
hundred dollars a month and six dollars per diem when he was away
from home on a ferrying mission. Every man was taken in on a three
months' trial arrangement; if at the end of that time it appeared that he
was not going to work out, we sent hnn back to his home and draft
board. Those who did work out were commissioned ofiBicers. Within six
months after Pearl Harbor we had hired some thirty-five hundred civilian
pilots for the Ferrying Command, of whom more than half were subse-
quently commissioned.

One of those who were not commissioned was the pilot who landed
a B-26 he was ferrying at a field halfway to his final destination and
went off and left it there with his parachute and flying clothes. The early
B-26's had stubby wmgs, and a wing-tip stall with a resulting crash that
was all too common. At any rate, he sent me this message: "I quit. The
only thing you need to make this a flying coffin is six handles." I accepted
his resignation, so notifying his draft board.

Our new men came from every walk of life. Olds loved to bring men
of social standing and wealth into the command; one of his early recruits
was Bruce Gimbel, who today is president of Saks Fifth Avenue. Gimbel
was a pilot and a good one, but he had had to overcome the handicap of
a crippled arm. When he went for his physical examination, the Air
Corps doctor took one look at him and turned him down.

Olds hated to be thwarted in anything. He was determmed that Gunbel
come in with us, and he carried the case all the way to the chief flight
surgeon. Major General David Grant.

"We need pilots, good pilots!" Olds thundered. "Here's a good pilot,
and you won't let me have him."

24 / OVER THE HUMP

After some shouting, General Grant finally agreed to go up in a plane
with Gimbel to see if he could fly it. It was a huge four-engine Liberator,
but Gimbel handled it masterfully. Grant came down shaking his head,
and Gimbel passed his physical examination.

In addition to building up numbers, we were developing specific tal-
ents and know-how. We learned early that there was a particular and
definite expertise required in delivering planes over long distances, an
expertise requiring techniques and trainmg over and above those neces-
sary for the flying of combat missions. When General Douglas Mac-
Arthur, at the head of the beleaguered American forces in the Philip-
pines, called for more bombers, some sixty or more, mostly B-17's, were
assembled at Sacramento. Flying the Pacific was hardly safe, and it was
determined to fly them over the southeastern route, across the South
Atlantic to Africa, thence over the Middle African desert, Arabia and
Asia to then: eventual destination. Under orders of the Bomber Com-
mand, the planes began the transcontinental part of the trip on December
19, flying to Fort Worth, Jacksonville, and then McDill Field in Tampa.
There oflBicers of the Third Air Force took one look at the condition of
the planes and crews, and wired Air Corps headquarters in Washington
for help. By that time it was known that the Ferrying Command had had
the only experience in transatlantic flying, and the matter eventually
came to us. We immediately dispatched two of our experts. Major Rod-
erick Towers and Lieutenant Reichers, whom I mentioned previously,
down to find out what was wrong. Thanks to their speciaUzed talents
and knowledge they quickly found out — everything was wrong.

Most of the crews were very young, just out of school, and had little
experience working together as crews; everybody distrusted everybody
else, and with reason. The pilots had had only fifteen to twenty hours
flying time in four-engine aircraft, with a conunensurate lack of time in
bad-weather flying, night landings, and take-offs. They had little — at most
no— experience in instrument flying — I suppose they were to fly two*
thirds of the way around the world, partly at night and through the bad
weather they were bound to encounter, over routes known for only a
few months, by visual flight rules. The crews didn't know where they
were gomg, but they had an idea it was a long way off, and had conse-
quently scrounged just about everything they could possibly need any-
where and loaded the junk on their planes. The only portable aircraft

Ferrying Division / 25

scale in existence was packed up and flown to McDill Field. Every plane
was weighed, and every plane was proved to be overloaded by some
three thousand pounds on the average. Nor was the overload apportioned
evenly throughout the compartments of each plane, but just stuffed in
any place. Many planes were badly out of balance.

Towers and Reichers assembled maps and briefing materials, opened
a postgraduate school for night and bad-weather flying, including land-
ings and take-offs, and, of course, shook down the contents of every
plane. All during this tune the crew members were getting to know each
other, building up that confidence in each other which is an essential
part of team work.

Unfortunately these planes did not reach the Philippines in time. Some
got as far as Java, others were held up along the way. Four crashed. No
doubt many more would have had the same fate if either crews or planes
had been permitted to take off in the condition in which they came to
McDill Field. In any event, none would have reached the Philippines.

Unfortunately, the administration of the Ferrying Command was not
keeping up with the increase in our knowledge and numbers. Late one
night, pulling my once-a-week toxir of duty as officer of the day, I began
thinking of the problems we faced. They seemed insurmountable already,
with just the few planes we were handling, and yet the President had
publicly predicted that the number of planes produced by the American
aviation industry would eventually reach fifty thousand a year.

We simply had to decentralize, I realized; we had to have some form
of organization by which routine decisions could be made at a lower level
instead of piling up m Washington— which meant me. I took pencil and
paper and, in an hour or so, tore the command apart and put it back
together again in a simple little chart, settmg up a general headquarters,
a domestic division, and a foreign division. I showed it to General Olds
the next day. He grabbed it and put it into effect, with Major Thomas L.
Mosely in charge of the foreign division, me commanding the domestic
division. I had a total strength of 934 — 386 pflot officers and 548 en-
listed men. We were rapidly building up specific talents and know-how.

Not every man has the opportunity to see in black and white just what
an official historian thinks of him. It may be fitting here, then, to borrow
a phrase, to stop and take a look at how Lieutenant Colonel Oliver

26 / OVER THE HUMP

LaFarge, chief historian of the Air Transport Command, described me
in his book on the ATC, The Eagle in the Egg:

The Domestic Division was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel
William H. Tunner, as he had now become. This was the beginmng
of the mission which was to lead him to general rank. Major Gen-
eral Tunner played so important a part in the Command's history
that it is fitting to stop and take a look at him. An unusually hand-
some man, cold in his manner except with a few intimates, some-
what arrogant, brilliant, competent. He was the kind of officer
whom a junior officer is well advised to salute when approaching
his desk. His loyalty to the organization he commanded was nota-
ble, and so was his ability to maintain the morale of his men. The
men of his Division held themselves to be somewhat apart from
and above the rest of the Command; even after he had been trans-
ferred to India and many of them were scattered into other parts of
the organization, they remained Tunner's men. He defended them
against all comers, and was every whit as ready as General Olds to
stand up against higher echelons when the welfare of his conmiand
was threatened. Air Transport Command Headquarters came to
look upon him with a mixture of exasperation, admiration, and reli-
ance. They wished he would mend his ways, be less independent,
more willing to conform. Action to realize this wish was baffled by
the frequency with which the non-conformist proved to be in the
right.

Tunner faced a fantastic problem . . .

Although both embarrassed and flattered by LaFarge's words, I do
agree with him that Tunner faced a fantastic problem. It was, of course,
the delivery of all the planes which were now pouring oflE the assem-
bly lines. It was no longer a simple matter of picking up a plane at the
factory and flying it to its final destination. By 1942, the necessity for
modification of many types of planes had become paramount. Thus a
plane destined for duty in one part of the world should be modified to
meet climate conditions, combat conditions, or both.

The Ah: Materiel Command had learned that modifying the plane at
the factory was too confusing. They thus set up modification centers to
which aircraft would flow in from different factories. Sometimes a plane
would have to be sent to more than one modification center, and then

Ferrying Division / 27

on to a processing plant for final readiness for overseas. Careful schedul-
ing and supervision were required to keep both planes and pilots moving.

Another factor was the great variety of planes, even before modifica-
tion. During the course of the war our pilots were called upon to fly a
total of some hundred and fifty different models. We could hardly expect
our new pilots to step into four-engine planes and fly them over long dis-
tances on instruments. On the other hand, there were many types of planes
which were far easier to fly, and it would be a waste of time and training
to assign a pilot checked out on B-17's to a small, open-cockpit trainer.
The problem answered itself. I set up a program of on-the-job training
in which the pilots actually performed the mission of the Command at
the same time they bettered their flying. Thus those at the bottom of the
ladder would deliver the simplest fcwms of aircraft, such as artillery
spottmg planes and primary trainers. As they built up their flying time
in these basic types, they would also be going to ground school and
instrument-flying school, preparing themselves for the next step up.
Gradually, step by step, they worked their way from short hops in
trainers on clear days to delivering the largest aircraft all over the world.

All along I msisted on rigid standards of excellence. Occasionally
some pressure was put on me to release pilots for more difiBcult planes
before they were quite ready, but I always refused. I saw no reason for
increasing the danger of losing either pilot or plane. Many other com-
mands adopted the specifications I set up for my pilots.

We had six classifications of pilots, as follows:

Qass

I.

Qass

n.

Class

III.

Qass

IV.

Qass

V.

Qass

p.

Pilots qualified to fly low-powered single-engine planes.
Pilots qualified to fly twin-engine trainers and utility
planes.

Pilots qualified to handle twin-engine cargo and medium

transports, and on instruments.

Twin-engine planes in advanced categories, such as
medium bombers and heavy transports.
The biggest planes, four-engine bombers and transports
and be able to deliver them overseas.
Single engine, high-performance pursuits or fighters. This
was a special class because, although these fast and hard-
to-handle planes certainly requured more than average

28 / OVER THE HUMP

experience, the flying of fighters was not in itself of great
experience value in working up to the big four-engine
planes.

Through this method of training we were able to utilize our thousands
of pilots of different skills on our many airplanes requiring different
skills. Each pilot kept a card which showed his current rating.

In April, 1942, Colonel Harold L. George succeeded Bob Olds, now
a brigadier general, as commandmg officer of the Ferrying Command.
General George — ^he received his first star soon after assuming com-
mand, and eventually became a lieutenant general — ^was a planner, a
thinker, a strategist, a hard worker, and a good administrator as well.
He had been one of that small group of dedicated Air Corps officers
who had put their careers on the line and stuck with the disciple of
strategic air power, General BiUy Mitchell, back in the Twenties. General
George had a firm and complete grasp of the entire concept of air power.

Under his command the organization expanded swiftly and smoothly.
In June it became the Air Transport Command, with my new Ferrying
Division now charged with all ferrying operations, domestic and foreign.
Eventually, too, the Ferrying Division took over training of pilots for
the entire ATC, and the operation of the express air transport services,
through the foreign divisions of the ATC. I moved my headquarters to
Cinciimati, Ohio.

As the Division grew, our pilots began to take on a certain person-
ality of their own. Sure, those of us in the ATC were called "Allergic
to Combat," "Army of Terrified Civilians," and other unpleasant, some-
times unprintable, epithets. It was always perfectly true that our ferry
pilots were not combat pilots. Their very mission was different from that
of the combat pilot. A combat pilot, whether at the controls of a four-
engme bomber with a five-man crew helping out, or of a fighter blasting
recklessly through the sky, is to inffict damage upon the enemy. The
pilot is always expected to bring back the plane and the crew, but if he
doesn't, well, you expect losses in combat. And a combat pilot who risks
his life and his ship in order to inflict serious damage upon the enemy
is a hero. He thinks nothing of calling upon his plane for everything it
has to give. That's why the plane has it in the first place. In short, the

Ferrying Divmon / 29

combat pilot is not supposed to be cautious, or conservative, or sparing
of his ship.

But in the Ferrying Command we had to have different standards. The
mission of our pilots was to move their planes along toward their ulti-
mate destination, which for many planes was combat Our pilots were
not supposed to risk their lives or their ships, but to fly skillfully and
safely and deliver those planes in good condition. The ferry pilot was
not expected to be a hero, but just to do his job.

But sometunes just his job was enou^. In the long overwater flights
of up to twelve hours or more, the ferrying crews flew through all kinds of
weather, through storms and constant overcast and below-zero tempera-
tures, with the gray-green, oily sea waiting below if they should make
the slightest mistake. Our navigators took these planes to pinpoints on
the globe. Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, for example, is a thou-
sand miles from anywhere, and it is tiny; just a mountain sticking out
of the sea with its top knocked off and made into a landing field. As our
pilots used to sing:

If I don't hit Ascension
My wife will get a pension.

Our pilots flew over the top of the world, over the Arctic, and over
the roof of the world, as the Himalayas are called. They flew over vast
deserts as well as over the oceans. In the deserts of North Africa the fine
sand ate into the engines; in the equatorial rain forests excessive mois-
ture brought on rot and rust.

The ferry pilot fiew not only under constantly varying conditions, over
widely different sections of the earth's surface, but he flew different types
of planes as well. He'd set a big plane down on one runway in the morn-
ing, and take off in a pursuit ship with totally different characteristics
from another runway that same afternoon. He might fly for a week or
a month or a year from one fine airport in the continental United States
to another, then suddenly find hunself makmg a landmg at night, with two
Zeros on his tail, on a Chinese landing strip. He might fly two thousand
miles, king of the cockpit, master of the ship, then come home as just
another tired passenger in a canvas seat on a slow but reliable Douglas
C-47, tossing and pitching for hour on hour through the sky. He ate

30 / OVER THE HUMP

when he could and he slept when he could. And if and when he finally
got back to a base for any length of time, we promptly threw him in
training school. This was no breeze, either, and he knew it. For going to
sleep at the wrong time in one of those classes might mean death when
the subject was brought up again at ten thousand feet over the Green-
land Icecap.

Our ferry pilot was by no means a drudge; he could wear his hat as
sloppy as any fighter pilot. Many men had nowhere to spend their
salaries, and they played poker for high stakes. They got into, and out
of, scrapes in dives and quarters and districts all over the world. They
were not all angels. But they did know how to fly airplanes, and fly them
safely and securely so they could arrive at their destination with a plane
well cared for and ready for action.

We tried to get and train, and keep pilots capable of the highest pos-
sible performance. One of my duties was to provide the best possible
working conditions, and the highest quality maintenance in return. We
did not want to lose either men or planes. Whenever we had an accident,
particularly a bad one, I wanted to know what had gone wrong in order
to do all humanly possible to keep it from going wrong again. I received
reports on hundreds of accidents, often from the survivors in person.

Just about everybody in America, I'm sure, knew about the crash of
one of our planes in the Pacific with Colonel Eddie Rickenbacker, the
World War I ace and former Oiaurman of the Board of Eastern Airlines,
aboard. Rickenbacker, with his military aide, Colonel Hans Adamson,
was on a secret mission in the Pacific for the War Department, and we
were asked to provide transportation. They proceeded to Hickam Field,
Oahu, without mishap. Then we assigned them to another plane, a B-17.
The crew consisted of Captain William T. Cherry, Jr., pilot; Second
Lieutenant James C. Whittaker, copilot; Second Lieutenant John J.
DeAngelis, navigator; Staff Sergeant James W. Reynolds, radio operator,
and Private John Bartek, engineer. It was a good crew. Cherry, a Texan
with a drawl, had come into the Ferrying Command from the civilian air-
Imes; he*d been a pilot for American Airlines. Whittaker was forty-one,
an old-timer who'd been flying his own plane for years.

The plane had one other passenger, Sergeant Alex Kaczmarczyk, on
his way back to join his outfit after having been hospitalized with a
severe case of jaundice for over six weeks. Shortly after ten o'clock on

Ferrying Division / 31

the night of October 19, 1942, Cherry completed his standard pre-take-
off routine and started the big plane down the runway. Suddenly one of
the wheels locked. Cherry did a masterful job of keeping the big ship
under control, and no one was injured. But the ship was in no shape to
continue; a new Flying Fortress was turned over to the party, and they
transferred their gear. One of the items which probably should not have
been taken aboard the new ship was DeAngelis' octant, the optical instru-
ment used in celestial navigation. The instrument had taken a severe
knock, but DeAngelis inspected it carefully and decided that it had not
been damaged. The desire not to hold up Rickenbacker any longer may
have had some influence on his decision.

This time Cherry took off without incident, and pointed the nose of
the plane on the compass heading DeAngehs gave him. Just before dawn
DeAngelis reported the ship to be right on course. The plane droned on;
the Pacific beneath was obscured by an overcast. As the estunated time
of arrival neared, Cherry brought the plane down through the overcast.
There was no land in sight. The radio direction finder suddenly refused to
work. The plane was lost, with fuel enough for about four more hours
of flight

Four hours later there was still no land in sight. The Pacific that day
was not so pacific, with high seas running, but there was no recourse
but to set the plane down. Rickenbacker took over the landing prepara-
tions and had everybody except the two pilots and the radio operator
lie down on the floor, feet first and braced against the bulkhead. Cherry
came down in a shallow glide, crosswind, between the waves. Just before
the plane hit, he pulled the nose up, hookmg the tail in the water. The
big plane came to a dead stop within ten yards, with no injuries to any-
one. Again Cherry had done a masterful job.

Working smoothly together, passengers and crew broke out the two
five-place rubber rafts and the small three-man raft. All three were
inflated easily, with carbon dioxide gas. Quite a bit of thought had gone
into these rafts, but from the beginning it seemed that the designers had
apparentiy had pygmies in mind. Rickenbacker, Adamson, and Bartek
were assigned to one of the five-place rafts; Cherry, Whittaker, and
Reynolds to the second, and DeAngelis and Kaczmarczyk to the three-
place doughnut. The two men in the small raft quickly found that their
only possible position was to sit facing each other with each man's legs

32 / OVER THE HUMP

over the other man's shoulders. In the two larger rafts the seating situa-
tion was almost as ridicxilous.

There had been emergency rations on the plane, but the man delegated
to that detail had failed. The only food brought off consisted of four
oranges.

As flie days went on, and the men grew weaker and weaker, the ni^ts
grew colder and colder. There was no way to escape the constant spray,
which kept Hiem soaking wet, yet there was no water to drink. During
the day they were beneath the tropical sun, which blazed down on them
from direcfly overhead. Their clothes rotted away. The salt water ate
mto their skin, raising ulcers. And so it went, day after day after day.
The greatest event was tiie rain squaU which enabled them to Uve. The
trage<ty was the deafli of Kaczmarczyk.

Day after day after day, for a fuB three weeks. They were weakened
sheUs of tiiemselves. When Whittaker's raft finally drifted upon the beach
of a coconut island, he feU down eight straight times until he was finally
able to stand erect, witii the aid of an oar. The seven survivors were
eventually gotten to hospitals and brought back to strengtii and health,
and the episode was all over as far as the pubUc was concerned. But
not in my headquarters. I interviewed Cherry and Whittaker careftiUy,
and steps were taken to avoid a similar episode. Cherry was assigned by
ATC to work witii the designers of a new model raft. Mandatory instruc-
tions were issued on pieffigfat inspections of all suiidval equipment and
supplies, as well as a preflight inspection of the octant to be used.

A young lieutenant named Joe C. DeBona told me of his experiences
on a nightinare island in tiie moutii of tiie Amazon River. DeBona was
the pilot of one of sixteen P-38's to be ferried from Long Beach to Oran,
North Africa. So that the pursuits could avoid instrument flying, a B-24
led die pack by some five hundred miles, radiomg back the flight con-
ditions— weatiier, ceiling, visibility. The newly installed photographic
equipment took up all tiie available space in tiie plane, so anotiier B-24
foHowed the flight with the luggage of tiie sixteen pilots, plus life rafts
and survival equipment This second B-24 was piloted by Major Andrew
Cannon, tiie deputy commander of tiie Sixtii Ferrying Group; it was to
be my pleasure to hear and see a lot more of Andy Cannon as the years
yf&at by.

The route led from Long Beach to Miami, Puerto Rico, Trinidad,

Ferrying Division / 33

Dutch Guiana, Bel6m and Natal in Brazil, Ascension Island, Monrovia,
Manakech, and Oran. The flight proceeded without mishap to Dutch
Guiana, Between there and BcUm the weather was completely overcast,
as it usually is over this stretch of dense jungle, and the P-38's had to
climb to twenty-eight thousand feet to get over the clouds. That's where
DeBona was, five miles over the very worst part of the Amazon jungje,
when both engines went out at once. We'll never know for certam just
exactly what happened to the engines, but everything points to a failure
m the fuel system, probably some kind of vapor lock. As the flight par-
alleled the coast line, DeBona had no idea whether he was over land or
water, and decided to ride his plane down rather than jump. It turned
out to be a wise decision. He came out of the clouds at five hundred feet
and found himself over a hellish combination of jungle, marsh, swamp,
and water; it was the north side of the mouth of the Amazon. He man-
aged to set the plane down in a swampy area on an island. Though un-
hurt, he certainly wasn't going anywhere. He was surrounded by brackish
water and crocodiles. High ground abounded in snakes, ants, and ticks.
The ticks, DeBona assured me, looked like snails and bit with both ends.
At nigjit every beast in the jungle came out to hunt.

"It was kill or be killed," DeBona said. "The growl of the predator,
the scream of the prey — ^it went on all night.**

He stayed in the cockpit of the plane, hopmg we'd get him before the
beasts did.

In the meantime the word was out to be on the lookout for him. Andy

Camion had gotten involved in a serious controversy over the lost plane.
On arrival at the base in Bel6m he had quite rightly insisted that the
search and rescue section begin its work immediately. There were two
Navy PBY flying boats available for the mission, but at the time there
was no pilot on the base to fly them. Cannon was fully experienced on
PBY's — ^he had delivered two of them to the Panama Canal Zone — and
he immediately volunteered to take one out on the search.

The base commander was faced with a dilenuna. His orders were to
expedite this movement of pursuit planes urgently needed in the fight for
North Africa. To let Cannon go on the search would delay them— and
also his own PBY pilots might come along any time. He ordered Cannon
to proceed with the ferrying mission.

I didn't know of this controversy, but I did know that DeBona was

34 / OVBR THE HUMP

down, and I wanted him rescued. Every plane flying over that area had
orders to look out for him. Finally, after several days, the crew of a B-24
bemg ferried saw one of his flares, went down and circled the downed
plane to reassure him, and then proceeded on to Bel6m with the exact
spot marked on the chart Natives were contacted, and they went m to
get him. Joe was suffering from exposure and hunger, but he was other-
wise in good shape. It was a good thing, too, because the rescue sounded
like one of those things in which the cure was as bad as the disease. The
natives Hterally dragged him out of there. They went in with a special
team of oxen, and Joe came out han^ on to the tail of one of the beasts
as the aUigators and snakes scattered. Joe wound up with a gaUopmg
case of malaria, but he was safe and aKve, and that was what counted.

Shortly after I learned from DeBona about those double duty ticks in
the jungle, one ferry pflot came in to teU me about the Arctic. He and his
small crew, in a two-engine transport, had crashed while flying the north-
em route to England and before the ATC Northern Division got them
out of there, they'd become expert architects on snow houses.

The pilot told of a strange phenomenon which he described as "flying
in milk" or 'Vhite-oot" The snow is white beneath and the sky is white
above, and there is no line of demarkation, there is no horizon. There is
no way of telling, by the eye alone, whether you are ten feet over the
snow or ten thousand. It is not a fog, as the wings of the plane are clearly
visible, and often the sun is shining through. His accident was freakish
indeed. Thmking himself weU beyond Greenland and over the frozen sea,
he let down to five thousand feet and banked his transport for a minor
change in direction. His bewflderment must have been something to be-
hold when his left wing, which he was watching, touched something solid.
It was the top of the icecap which covers Greenland. He was only two
miles from the coast— but the wrong side. The accident required a large
expedition and several weeks to get him and the crew out but led to
greater knowledge of the Arctic and careftil briefings of following crews.
A full-scale rescne operation was maintained on the route permanently
from thm on.

The greatest continuing hassle in the Ferrying Division, one which
caused ripples of anger, frustration, and indignation still occasionally
being heard from today, began m a moment's chitchat at the water
cooler. One of our oflScers, Major Robwt M. Love, later deputy com-

Ferrying Division / 35

mander of ATC, was catching a drink at the same tune as I, and he
audibly hoped that his wife had gotten to work all right that morning.
Turned out that the Loves were living in Washington, but Mrs. Love
was commuting to her job in Baltimore by plane.

"Good Lord," I said, "Fm combmg the woods for pilots, and here's
one right under my nose. Are there many more women like your wife?"

"Why don't you ask her?" he said, and a meeting was arranged right
then and there.

Nancy Harkness Love turned out to be an important individual, and
she was a fine pilot. She had started flying when she was sixteen, and
as a flying student at Vassar CoUege had helped start student flying clubs
at other colleges. She had received her commercial license while still in
her teens, and after graduation had handled a special job for the Bureau
of Air Commerce. Then she married Bob Love, who had an aircraft
agency and a small airline in Boston, and worked with Mm in both the
busmess end and in delivering planes to customers. When Bob was called
to active duty, Nancy came to Washington with him. She was not only
an excellent pilot with 1,200 hours of flying time, but was also experi-
enced in organization and administration. And she proved that a woman
could be both attractive and efficienfly dependable at the same tune.

At our first meeting she assured me that there were already hundreds
of women who were proven, capable pilots, and tiiousands more who'd
leap at the chance to become flyers. We immediately set about making
plans for a women's flying corps.

We did not know that the utilization of women pilots had akeady
been proposed and rejected. As I learned later, Jacquelme Cochran, the
famous aviatrix who had established speed records in transcontinental
flying, had visited President Roosevelt at his Hyde Park estate and had
come away with a note personally signed by tiie President introducing
her and her ideas for women's participation in the Air Corps to General
Arnold. She prepared a long memorandum giving many good reasons
for the utilization of women pilots and proposing the establishment of
a ratiier grandiose women's military organization for the signature of
General Brett, who tiien passed it on to General Arnold. T don't know
why, but General Arnold disapproved it.

Unaware of tiiis previous efl^ort, Mrs. Love and I prepared a lengtiiy
memorandum proposing a complete program for acquirmg, training, and

36 / OVER THE HUMP

using women pilots. Our plan was less grandiose than Miss Cochran's,
and probably prepared in a simpler and military manner. I signed it and
sent it off to General George. By this later time we needed pilots, any
pilots, badly. I was so sure that the proposal would be accepted that on
the same day I went to Wihnington, Delaware, headquarters of my Second
Ferrying Group, to make arrangements for housing the women we hoped
to get.

General George in the meantime got verbal approval from General
Arnold's staff, and official announcement was made over the signature
of the Secretary of War. It turned out we could not commission women
pilots m the Armed Forces, as we had originally intended, but we did
work out a plan with civil service by which they were to be paid two
hundred fifty dollars a month (fifty dollars less than the men), with six
dollars per diem allowance when away from theur station.

Some of our first applicants were real lulus. So many crackpots de-
scended on us and there were so many requests for furtfier information
that I sent a memorandum to the War Department Bureau of Public
Relations, asking them please not to put out any more publicity on the
matter.

But applications also came in from the people we wanted, fine women
with solid flying experience. Out of our first squadron of twenty-five
pilots, twenty-one were not only professional fliers but instructors. The
first pilot to qualify after Mrs. Love was Mrs. Betty Hyler Gillies, who
had a total of 1,400 hours of flying time. One gkl, Evelyn Sharp, came to
us with 2,950 hours; she'd been a flying barnstormer.

Members of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, WAFS, began
delivering planes in the fall of 1942. The press went for the idea in a
big way, and with the publicity spotlight on them, our women pilots had
to conduct themselves in such a manner that not a single breath of
scandal could be directed against them. At first the regulations were
stringent, such as those which attempted to reduce their contact with
male pilots to the barest minimum. Eventually the regulations were
relaxed, and men and women actually flew planes together. But at the
beginning, the girls were heavily chaperoned.

As our program progressed. Miss Cochran appeared again, this time
with the titie of Director of Women Pilots in Air Corps headquarters in
Washington. She had the name changed from WAFS to WASP's, for

Ferrying Division / 37

Women Auxiliary Service Pilots. She soon had some of them performing
other flying duties than ferrymg planes; one carefully chosen group of
brave young women towed aerial targets for anti-aircraft practice. Others
flew slow time after engine chan^ or overhaul.

Most of her women pilots, however, ferried planes, and advanced in
the same sequence of traming as the men. A few, including Mrs. Love
and Mrs. Gillies, were even checked out on four-engine bombers and
delivered several of them from the factories. Some 117 became profi-
cient in our fast fighter planes. One woman delivered five pursuit planes
in four days, each a distance of more than two thousand miles.

Despite our most rigorous controls, we stiill had a handful of cowboys
among our male pilots. When we began experiencing a high degree of
accidents m the deliveries of P-39*s, most of them of such seriousness
that the pilot was killed and tiie plane a complete washout, I put tibie
cause down primarily as pilot failure. Sure, the P-39 was a hot ship, all
right, but it was perfectly safe if it was flown accordmg to specifications.
It was plainly written in the literature on the plane, and constantly called
to the attention of pilots assigned to it, that tiiis airplane needed speed,
at least 150 miles per hour, to maneuver. It had the glide angle of a
brick, and before adequate baffles were placed in the tanks, gas slosh-
ing around didn't help any. But, nevertheless, there was no necessity
whatsover for the most common type of accident hurting and even killmg
our pilots and completely wrecking our planes. These accidents occurred
when the plane got out of control on the very first turn after taking off, or
the last turn coming in. The reason was obvious. On take-off, pilots would
put the plane into a steep bank before reaching the required speed; on
landing, they'd reduce speed too much before making the last turn. But
anycme who had read tibe specifications and characteristics of the plane
— and they were quite plain and clear — ^knew that it would go into a
high-speed stall under such conditions.

As a result of these accidents, we were gettmg a lot of static from
pilots who clauned the P-39 to be a flying coffin. Our women in the
meantime had proved themselves as ferry pilots. Tliey paid attention in
class, and they read the characteristics and specifications of the plane
they were to fly before they flew it. The solution of the P-39 problem
was a natural one, therefore. With no doubts whatsoever, I had a group
of girls checked out on P-39's and assigned them to make P-39 deliveries.

38 / OVER THE HUMP

They had no trouble, none at all. And I had no more complaints from
the men.

When we began getting similar static from pilots objecting to ferrying
B-17's over the North Atlantic to the United Kingdom, I attempted the
same solution. These flights had become almost routine, and there was no
reason for complaint; I decided to let a couple of our girls show them
just how easy it really was. Our number one and number two pilots,
Nancy Love and Betty Gillies, leaped at the chance to be the first women
to ferry a plane overseas. We had scheduled a blitz movement of two
hundred B-17's to go over, and I assigned the two women to one of
those planes. With three additional crew members, all men, Mrs. Love
and Mrs. Gillies flew their assigned Fortress from Cincinnati to New
Castle, La Guardia Field in New York, Presque Isle, where they received
final briefing and clearance, and Goose Bay, Labrador, the last stop
before flying the Atlantic. The trip was uneventful, even though they
had to fly on instruments most of the way. The weather was bad at Goose
Bay, and the big hop across the Atlantic was delayed.

In the meantime, at what I had planned to be the last minute, I noti-
fied C. R. Smith, General George's deputy at ATC headquarters, of the
impending flight. He in turn sent a message off to Brigadier General
Paul Burrows, commander of the ATC European Wing, to the effect
that a B-17 was en route piloted by two WASP's. The message was
handed to General Burrows at dinner, and by coincidence General Bur-
rows' dinner guest that night was, of all people. General Arnold. I don't
imagine diimer was too social after that, for General Arnold apparently
hit the ceiling. He promptly radioed a message to hold the plane, and
from then on to permit women to fly only in domestic service.

His message arrived at Goose Bay the moment the plane was orig-
inally scheduled to take off. At the time, however, it was sitting at the
end of the runway, Mrs. Love and Mrs. Gillies in it, waiting out a
fifteen-minute delay. The commanding officer of the base put on his coat
and took the message out to them. They did not make the flight.

Though no WASP-piloted overseas flight was ever made, the women
did a magnificent job at home. They freed many men for overseas de-
liveries. When several women had worked up to the point where they
were checked out on the most difficuh of all ships, the pursuits, we
stationed a detachment at the Republic Company on Long Island to fly

Ferrying Division / 39
P-47's from the factory to the first processing station. During the year
and a half they were assigned there, they brought two thousand P-47's
away from the factory. No men were needed there at all. By the end of
September, 1944, WASP's were deUvering three-fifths of all pursuit
ships.

Every big bomber and every cargo plane flown by women pilots was
safely delivered. In all, they deUvered 12,652 planes, with only three
fatal accidents. Their accident rate was lower than the men's. Yet the
most we ever had was 303 WASP's; we had at the same time eight thou-
sand male ferrying pilots.

I had moved on from the Ferrying Command when the steps leading
to the demise of the organization began, in the fall of 1944. The fact
that they had not been commissioned as officers still rankled some of
their numbo:, and the National Association of Women Pilots started a
letter-writing campaign appealing to Congress to give the girls their com-
missions. All of us who knew the WASP's thought they deserved it. But
apparently both Congress and the press thought this to be high-pressure
lobbying; at any rate, the campaign backfired.

About this time Miss Cochran recommended that General Arnold either
give the girls a military status or discontinue the program entirely. I suppose
that General Arnold, with far more important problems to worry about,
was sick of the whole thing. At any rate, he took Miss Cochran up on
her proposal and inactivated the program effective December 20, 1944.

The two-year existence of the WAF-WASP coincided with the period
of the Ferrying Division's greatest growth. During 1943 the general
operations of the division increased by astronomical figures. In our
second full year as the Ferrying Division, from June, 1942 to June, 1943,
we delivered 3,609 planes to foreign destinations, completed 54,947
domestic movements, flew a total of some 75,000,000 miles. In the next
twelve-month period we delivered 12,500 planes ovaseas, 110,000
domestically.

The first summer of the war, we set up the route from Great Falls,
Montana, to Fairbanks, Alaska, by which five thousand planes were

deUvered to our then ally, Russia. Then three separate foreign transport
runs, each regularly scheduled, were begun— the Fireball to India via
the South Atlantic, the Crescent to India via the Azores, and the Snow-
ball to the United Kingdom over the North Atlantic. We also set up sev-

40 / OVER THE HUMP

eral domestic routes, crisscrossing the nation to carry supplies and move
ferrying crews. If the first year is the hardest in airline operation our
records did not show it. On the first anniversary of the Fireball, for
example, we had flown seven million miles, averaging 125 ocean cross-
ings and subsequent flights to India a month, without injury to a smgle
passenger. One of the pilots on this run, incidentally, was a young officer
from Arizona named Barry Goldwater. The Crescent, with twenty C-54's
in constant service, covered ten million miles that first year without a
fatality. That was my first good look at this new four-engine plane,
known to civilians as the DC-4. Its combination of big payload and
Douglas dependability couldn't help but impress anyone who looked at
the records. I was to see a great deal more of C-54's in the next several
years, and at my specific request.

On the Crescent run, incidentally, I*d set up a pony-express type of
operation, with fresh crews taking over at specific points. The plane
itself went straight through, from America to its final destination, with-
out the delaying transfer of passengers or cargo.

Actually our first passengers as such were wounded paratroopers,
whom we returned to the States from the combat zones. At first the
medical department was far from co-operative with our first efforts at
air evacuation of the wounded. Finally the ATC just went ahead and
loaded some wounded soldiers on a United States-Abound plane without
specific authorization. It just made sense that these men would get better
treatment and recuperate faster here m the good old United States than
in military hospitals far, far from home, and we had planes returning
empty in which they could ride. After we did it the first time, with
splendid results, it became easier to get permission to do it. Apparently
the first nurse to serve on such a flight was a girl who had never been
in a plane before, but as we went along, the operation became more
and more standardized. A flight surgeon would check the patients out
as capable of flying, and to each plane a crew of a nurse and a male
attendant would be attached. From that small, highly irregular begin-
ning, the air-evacuation program built up to the point where in May,
1945, the biggest month, 18,537 soldiers and sailors, airmen and
Marines, were flown back to the States for medical treatment.

Our system of training pilots for the Ferrying Division must have
evidenced some degree of success, for in October, 1943 the Division was

Ferrying Division / 41
given the respomibiUty of training all pilots for the Air Transport Com-
mand. By the end of the war, over fifteen thousand pilots had moved
through our transitional training schools.

I could fill this chapter with figures and statistics— number of miles
flown, planes delivered, passengers and tons of cargo transported, ad
nauseam. More important, I believe, are two new concepts bom in tiie
old Ferrying Command, carried on through the Ferrying Division, and
still very much in operation in the Air Force today.

The first of these was the development of a highly professional staff
of officers devoted to military air transport. Everything I accomplished
as commander was carried out through the eager and industrious men
who served on my staff. Before the Ferrymg Command and the ATC,
commandmg officers of aviation units had as a matter of course rele-
gated what little ah: transport there was to some subordinate officer or
section. Though great in their own field— combat— these commandos
cared Uttle and tiiought less about transport; to them it was sometiiing
anybody could do. My staff, on tiie otiier hand, composed of carefully
selected, intelligent men, and encouraged to tiiink creatively, constantiy
came up with new ideas, new methods of carrying out our over-all mis-
sion. We proved that air transport is a science in itself; to be carried out
at its maximum efficiency air transport must be run by men who know
tile techniques of air transport and who are dedicated to air transport—
professionals!

Even greater, I believe, paramount over every otiier accomplishment,
was flie early organization and installation of the Flying Safety program
in tile Ferrying Command. The idea immediately started spreading to
otiier commands, and today tiie United States Air Forces has its Flying
Safety Command.

The basic idea of tiie Flying Safety program had begun during long
talks witii my brother George, an executive with tiie Travelers Insurance
Company. I was particularly interested in his description of a special
inspection system maintained by large insurance companies. When such
a company msures an industrial plant or facifity, for example, it sends
an expert or group of experts to inspect the property fuUy, witii special
emphasis on potential sources of danger, such as elevators and steam
boilers. The company's interest in possible trouble spots does not end
when flie poHcy is signed. Ratiier, it is continuous, witii tiie insurance

42 / OVER THE HUMP

company's experts making regular inspections of the insured facility's
equipment as well as its accident and fire prevention programs.

If an insurance company found it profitable to go to the trouble and
expense of making its own inspection of a boiler or a warehouse, I
thouj^t, then surely the Air Corps would 6nd it profitable to make a
similar additional inspection of expensive equipment to which the lives
of Americans would be entrusted. I called in one of my officers, Captain
(Bill) Walters, who in civilian life was involved in this facet of the
insurance business, and asked him to start setting up a program in the
Ferrying Division similar to this industrial insurance inspection, under
the name of Flying Safety. Our inspectors were called flying safety
officers and their small units flying safety sections. Each echelon of
command had its flying safety section. Their job was to prevent acci-
dents by continually reviewing the procedures of other departments, but
when an accident did occur, flying safety committees were formed to
determine and review the causes and to recommend future action to be
taken to prevent repetition.

This flying safety activity, born of big business, became big business
in itself as the war went on, and bigger still, both in the Air Force and
civilian airlines, after the war was over. Today a single accident, in Air
Force or akline, is cause for the most thorough and minute investiga-
tion and analysis of every facet of the aircraft itself — structure, engines,
accessories, weigfht and balance, the crew, every activity of each member;
communications and ak traffic control — ^mdeed, every conceivable detail
which could in the most remote way be a contributing cause to the
accident or even shed some light on a possible contributing cause. All
this is done to fix the responsibility and to prevent that type of accident
from ever happening again.

There was no such thing as a flying safety program before that modest
beginning early in 1942. World War II is history now, and so ai:e those
fabulous statistics of thousands of pilots moving hundreds of thousands
of planes over millions on millions of miles. But the flying safety program
lives on, preventing accidents and saving lives today and tomorrow as
well as yesterday.

CHAPTER III

The Hump

As I came in for a landing at the Chabua base, far up the
Brahmaputra River in Upper Assam, that day in early August, 1944,
I could hardly fail to see the huge black blotches at the end of the run-
way, I knew too well what they were. Each was a lastmg memorial to a
group of American airmen, the crew of the plane that had crashed and
burned at that spot. If I had needed a reminder of my purpose in coming
to this base, those burned spots would have served the purpose well.
For it was my intention to take a plane of the identical type that had
made those ineradicable blemishes, and pilot it myself over the Hunalaya
Mountains into China.

I knew, of course, that flying the Hump was considered as hazardous
as flying a combat mission over Germany; one of the major reasons for
my being sent to this God-forsaken area was to reduce the appalling
accident rate. Still I looked forward with eagerness to the day's adven-
ture. I was going to fly the Hump myself, not as a passenger with a
veteran of the Hump at the controls, but as pilot. I was the new com-
mander of this unprecedented operation at the ends of the earth. Before
I could properly command it, I knew I had to fly it, fly it with my own
hands on the controls, my own feet on the rudders, my own eyes on the
instruments.

With me were my copilot, Lieutenant Colonel Red Forman, and my
aide. Captain Dan Wheeler. I wanted them both to accompany me on
the flight. Forman was destined to be chief pilot for the entire operation,
and Wheeler would later serve as pilot of my plane, doing the actual
flying while I would attend to my administrative duties. I could get a
lot of this type of work done on these long flights. But all that was in
the future. For this trip I intended to fly the plane myself.

43

44 / OVER THE HUMP

We came in over the Assam tea gardens, touched down, and taxied
up to the Operations Building. I climbed down and was met by the wing
commander, Colonel Robert Baker, known as an able and tough operator.
Like me, he was one of several officers who had been taken from im-
portant assignments in the Ferrying Division and sent here to the India-
China Division. Like many other officers, he probably felt that he had
been exiled. We did not waste tune with effusive salutations.

"I Want the first plane out of here for China," I told him bluntly.

He looked at me for a moment "You're not checked out, sk," he said.

"Don't worry about that," I told him. "Just get me the next plane.
Let's go to your office and talk about this."

In his office Baker picked up his phone, called Operations, and re-
layed the message that I wanted the first plane out. He listened a
moment, then placed his hand over the mouthpiece and looked up at
me. "The next plane will be ready in twenty minutes. But it's full of
passengers. Wouldn't you prefer to — "

"No, I wouldn't," I interrupted. "Let the passengers remain as they are.
Tell your Operations Officer that General Tunner will pilot the plane,
and Lieutenant Colonel Forman will be copilot. Captain Wheeler will
also go along." ;

Baker knew full well that not one of us had ever flown the Hump
before. He plainly didn't like the idea of our violating the rule that a
pilot would first go over with a man who was Hump-experienced before
flying it himself. But I was determined that I was going over at the flrst
opportunity, and this was it. I didn't want an experienced pilot with me
because I felt I had to do it on my own. Anyway, Baker didn't have
much choice. I got the plane.

From Baker's office the three of us went to the weather room, where
I got what weather news there was. Inasmuch as we had no weather
stations whatever on the Hump, our best source of weather information
was the returning pilots who reported what they had flown through.
That day, I learned, the weather on the Hmnp had been pretty good,
at least up to an hour or so before. Generally clear, wifli scattered
thunderstorms.

In the Operations room I was given some maps and a briefing — ^the
route I would take and a description of unusual features of the terrain.
One part of the briefing which made a particular impression on me was

The Hump / 45

the briefing officer's indication, on the map, of the rough location of
each wrecked airplane I would fly over.

The plane waiting for us was a C-46, also known, and not affection-
ately, as "Or Dumbo," or the "Plumber's Nightmare." As in the case
of any two-engine plane, when one engine failed, a 50-per-cent loss of
power resulted. But the C.46's, at least the early ones, were particularly
prone to engine failure. Like all other planes on the Hump, the C-46's
were being used hard, flown without adequate maintenance, and always
loaded to the maximum recommended by the factory. At its fuU load of
forty-nine thousand pounds— crew, passengers, cargo, gasoline— this
was a cumbersome beast that could cause anguish when it lost an engme.
And a fine time for an engine to quit was when you were calling upon
It to give an it had to get your extra-heavy plane off the ground. When
one engine went out, the wing would automatically drop. The only thing
you could do would be to put full power on the one remaimng engine
and pray it would hold up. If you were already starting to make your
turn, and were making it just a little too sharply, even full power on the
remaining engine couldn't save you. The ship would stall, and a black
spot at the end of the runway would be your memorial.

I had never flown a C-46 before, but I had been studying the tech-
mcal orders on it for months. So had Red Forman and Dan Wheeler,
and Red had made a short famiUarization flight in one. We were aU three
conscientious pflots, not cowboys, and I felt no quahrn about flying the
C-46. We climbed aboard, and I went through the routine procedure.
The engines sounded good as I revved them up, and I wasted no time
worrymg. If Baker had done his job properly, the plane was in flying
condition no matter who was at the controls, brigadier general or second
lieutenant The heavy plane jounced and bounced as we picked up speed
over the rough runway, but the engines were functioning sweetly, and
they puUed us smoothly up into the air. The base, in the hot, steaming,
fetid valley of the Brahmaputra, was less than one hundred feet above
sea level, and we had mountains to cross.

My instructions were to climb at the rate of three hundred feet per
minute, circling the airdrome twice to gain altitude, and then to proceed
southeast on the course, over the Naga Hills, named for the tribe of
head-hunters who lived in the uncharted area. To the north, behind us
across the valley, were the Mishmi Hills, whose tribal namesakes were

46 / OVER THE HUMP

not head-hunters — just mean and treacherous. Both groups of "hills"
would tower over any mountains east of the Mississippi, but neither was
as high as the Patkai Range, an abrupt wall of mountains almost two
miles high, which rose directly to the east of Chabua. We flew over the
Naga Hills to the valley of the Upper Chindwin, m Burma. It was down
this steammg valley, but farther to the south, that General Joseph W.
"Vinegar Joe" Stilwell led his troops out of Burma.

I nudged Red, pointed below, and gave him this bit of information.
He looked down for several moments.

"I don't see any signs of any troops passmg by there," he said. "No
abandoned trucks, no nothin'. Just jungle."

It was true. There was nothing below us but river and jungle, green,
thick jungle. We were out of civilization entirely, even civilization as
existed in the sprawling Indian villages in the valley behind us. Beneath
us now the solid carpet of green was unbroken by any sign of life or
human habitation.

"My God," I said, "where are the people? Ten mmutes ago they were
everywhere — ^now there's nobody."

Beneath the upper crust of lush, dense foliage was the perpetual shade
and gloom of the jungle floor. We had lost planes all through this area,
and had never again heard from many of the crews and passengers.
Perhaps they had perished in the crash. If they had parachuted out, they
may have been caught m the treetops, or injured in the fall to earth.
They could have been injured, and starved to death. They could have
wandered aunlessly in the dense undergrowth until they dropped with
exhaustion. They could have been found by native tribes, and been mis-
treated, murdered, or turned over to the Japanese. On this bright, sun-
shiny day, from our altitude of over fifteen thousand feet, the green
carpet below did not seem so forbidding. But flying over it at night, or
in the monsoon season, with the clouds billowing in from the Indian
Ocean, or in the spring, with thunderheads towering high over the highest
mountains, with buffeting winds and severe vertical currents, with ice
gettmg thicker and thicker on the wings, its weight pulling you down-
then thoughts of the unseen jungle below could easily build up to produce
panic. There were constant reminders below of what had akeady hap-
pened to hundreds of Americans, and what could happen to us. For
this was the aluminum trail; in this strip of ugly terrain 550 miles long

The Hump / 47

by, at that time, only 50 mfles wide, over four hundred planes had
already gone down. The dense growth had crept over those that had
crashed in the jungle, which extended over the valleys and far up the
mountainside. But above ten thousand feet the growth was sparse and
scraggly, and above sixteen thousand feet even that disappeared, and
the crags were brown and bare and ug^y, with an occasional patch of
snow.

"Hey," Red cried, "there's one of those crashes!"

Ahead, on the barren mountain, was the gleam of alununum, all that
was left of an American plane. I consulted the map and found the
downed plane on it.

"It's a C-87," I said. "Went down over a year ago."

From then on, above the tree line, we saw others. We checked each
one against the vague notations on the maps. None seemed new.

We had crossed the Chindwin Valley, making a twenty-degree bend
to the east in accordance with our instructions, and the Kumon Moun-
tains on its eastern border. Now came another broad valley with two
yellow streams, the west fork and the east fork of the Irrawaddy. The
two flow together at Myitkyina, pronounced Mish-in-naw, to form the
Irrawaddy, and flow on to Mandalay, where, according to Kipling, the
flying fishes play.

Ahead of us now was still another mountain range, Uke all the others
running north and south, and then came the dark-brown Salween River,
just over the border in Western China, pouring down its fantastic gorge,
snaking through the mountains. We were now just about an hour out of
Chabua. After climbing steadily at the rate of three hundred feet per
minute all the way, we had finally reached our altitude of eighteen thou-
sand feet. I leveled off, and our speed increased from 145 miles per hour
climbing speed to 180 miles. We'd come about 125 miles*

Each successive range had towered fourteen to sixteen thousand feet.
After the Salween River rose the highest peaks of all, those of the San-
tsung Mountains — ^known to all American pilots as "The Rockpile." This
was the main range of the Himalayas, pushing down from the great
mysterious region of snow-covered peaks to the north; this was the back-
bone of the Hump. To the south the altitudes steadily declined until it
was safe to cross over at an altitude of sixteen thousand feet, but in that
durection were more and more Japanese.

48 / OVER THE HUMP

"Might be some Jap patrols down there,*' I said to Red as we crossed
the Irrawaddy Valley.

He shrugged. "They probably can't see us any better than we can see
them/' he said, and obviously dismissed the whole subject from his mind.

But those patrols, invisible or not, were still responsible for our route
that day. It was a compromise. Though it crossed some Japanese-held
territory, it still avoided the even greater altitude of the peaks to the
north. I could see them to the left, awesome snow-capped ridges. Of
course, Td be coming back over those higher mountams to the north,
I suddenly realized. Naturally, the empty, ligjiter planes would come
back by the high road.

Those ahead, rocky, barren, ugly, and threatening, were high enough.
On a clear day we could cross them at eighteen thousand feet. Had the
weather been bad, I would have climbed to a mmunum of twenty thou-
sand feet. Yet even today, flymg at the safest minimum altitude, I was
the better part of a mile higher than the top of some of our familiar
American mountains, like Pike's Peak. The air was thin and cold, the
oxygen mask was biting into my nose, and my feet were freezing. An
hour before I had been soaking wet with persphration.

On the eastern side of the Santsung Mountams the red Mekong
poured down another great gorge like that of the Salween. Each, at least
from the air, seemed fully as awe-inspiring as the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado. Salween, Mekong, and both branches of the Irrawaddy were
alike in that they flowed through deep, narrow gorges windmg through
the green jungle. If we went down we'd have to cross those gorges on
foot, because to go north was out of the question, and to go south would
be to walk into the arms of the Japanese. What a lousy thought, to
go down in that rugged green hell below. You were doomed!

Though still inhospitable-looking, the mountains became less jagged.
Finally, there were signs of people again, more and more people. I
suddenly realized that the area I had flown over, from the Naga Hills
range to the Mekong, though lying between two of the world's most
heavily populated areas, had been completely desolate. Now, as we could
see Tali Mountam in the distance, with Lake Tali at its foot, there were
signs of human habitation beneath us everywhere. The mountainsides
were terraced to make rice paddies, with tiers broad and narrow extend-
ing from the very tip of the peaks down to their bases. I tried to count

The Hump / 49

the tiers of rice paddies on one mountain. When I got to one hundred
I gave up. Some of them didn't look to be over two feet wide, yet there
they were, all diked and dammed, and green with growing rice. They
perched on the sides of the steepest slopes, clung precariously in the most
unlikely places. As more and more villages dotted the landscape, the
reason for cultivating these most unlikely plots became self-evident; to
feed this teeming population every possible square foot of soil must be
pressed into service. Approaching Kimming, the eastern terminal of the
flight that day, I saw by far the most impressive evidence of the multi-
tudes tibat have peopled this ageless land. It was a graveyard, and even
at our airspeed of some 180 statute miles per hour, we were over it for
a matter of minutes. I learned later that it was eleven miles long.

But I couldn't get that vast desolate area out of my mind. Why that
void? Had it been some pestilence which had wiped out the population?
Had war between India and China created a no-man's land? I never
found out. It's still a mystery.

The elevation at Kunming is some six thousand feet, and the drop is
not so pronounced as at the other end of the line. We landed on a run-
way of gravel, which had been broken out of its quarry by sledges,
chipped down to size by hand hammers, transported to this site by hand
in small baskets, and then laboriously spread by hand. Thousands on
thousands of Chinese working with only the rudest of equipment had
leveled this runway, then covered it with hand-crushed stone and rolled
it with hand-puUed rollers — ^two hundred men to a roller. It was rough,
bumpy, and hard on tires, but it was a runway, and I brought the C-46
down on it. I had flown the Hump — 550 miles in three hours and twenty
minutes.

And what was the reward? Eggis! Flied Eggis, as the Chinese waiters
called them. Real, honest-to-God eggs, not powdered, but fresh, fried
in butter, and worth a little jaunt over Japanese and jungles any old day.

Then a brief visit to Operations, briefing for the trip home to Chabua,
and we were off. The plane was lighter, and though we crossed the
Rockpile at twenty thousand feet, the return trip took less time*

But still, when I returned Baker's plane to him later that day, I was
stiff and sore and fatigued from the flight and its accompanying tension.
And this had been an uneventful trip in daylight hours in perfect weather,
I tried to put myself in the flight jacket of a young pilot fighting the con-

50 / OVER THE HUMP

trols of a beat-up Or Dumbo buckmg and jumping in a storm over the
Himalayas, a pilot sent out under my orders, my authority, my respon-
sibility. The picture was clearer now. My flight, foolhardy though it may
have appeared, had given me that insight I needed, an understanding
I could have gotten m no other way. Though tired and tense, I was glad
that I had done it.

"Well," I told Red and Dan, "we've flown the Hump. Any question
as to where we go now?"

There was none. One thing every pilot, gold bar or silver star, who'd
flown the Hump knew — each round trip paid off in liquid gold. We went
to the Operations office for debriefing, after which each of us was pre-
sented with a slip. Then it was to the dispensary, to turn that slip in for
two ounces of whiskey. It was supposed to be drunk then and there,
but some pilots saved up their slips for a binge, some nondrinkers gave
them away or sold them — ^illegally, of course. But to me, that evenmg,
those two ounces were just right. Old Crow — I'll never forget it.

"Here's to the Hump," I said, and Red and Dan clinked their glasses
against mine. "The Hump and our first free drink on Uncle Sugar!"

Though my flight that day ended in a dispensary in Chabua, it had its
beginnings three months before, halfway around the world in Washing-
ton. I had been summoned to Washington by General George and his
deputy, Major General C. R. Smith. After we had shaken hands, General
George came straight to the point. "Bill," he said, "I*m going to send
you to the India-Chma Division to run the Hump Airlift. What do you
think of the idea?"

I did not reply with the prompt alacrity I would have liked to see in
one of my own subordinates. First of all, I thought it was something of
ian odd request. Brigadier General Thomas O. Hardin, an excellent
administrator and a good friend, had been in command of the airlift
to China for only a few months. It seemed strange that he would be
replaced so soon.

I realized with anguish that this meant leavmg my. beloved Ferrying
Division, which I had brought up and nursed along from a few people
in 1941 to, that day in early May, 1944, a command of over fifty thou--
sand, including some eight thousand pilots. We were delivering ten
thousand planes per month within the United States, over a thousand

The Hump / 51

per month to overseas destinations. We were running two global airlines,
as well as performing all the training for the other ATC divisions. How
could I help but feel that the job I was doing there was important?

Finally, if I had to go anywhere, why, of all places, did it have to be
the Hump? It was a graveyard for commanders. Of the previous men
who had run it, or tried to, none had moved upward on leaving it, and
one, a brigadier general, had lost his stars out there.

My own command, I felt with pride but some justification, had earned
a fine reputation. The Hump had not Officers coming back from the
CSuna-Burma-India Theater went out of their way to tell you how much
they hated it. It was the place to which you exiled officers you wanted
to get rid of. I remembered an officer who couldn't get along with
anybody. He was arrogant and disagreeable, and he had been dispatched
to the ICW. Now he would be one of my staff. I remembered a class-
mate who had gone through flying school with me and earned his
wings, but had deteriorated into alcoholism and had been invited to
leave the service. He had come back in during the war and served in
my command. It soon became apparent that he was still a drunk. After
some futile attempts at rehabilitation I asked him if he wouldn't like
overseas duty in India, and he said he would. Well, there were two of
the officers I'd be dealing with in my new command, and there were
others. I recalled with a slight twinge that whenever the ATC had
levied on us requisitions for personnel for the foreign divisions, my
personnel officer had occasionally included m the India-China's quota
those men my base commanders felt they could best do without. Most
men, of course, who were transferred from the Ferrying Division were
fine, well-trained pilots and excellent mechanics who had gone through
the Ferrying Division's training program — but misfits were not wanted
in any outfit.

Though the airlift to China — and the whole complex in India and
China — ^was, like the Ferrying Division, a part of the Air Transport
Command, I knew little more about it. I certamly didn't compare it in
importance to my own command, and I did not consider the transfer
an improvement. On the other hand, I was eager to go overseas. I cer-
tainly didn't want to spend my wartime military career in the safety of
the States. If my overseas assignment was to be the graveyard of the
Hump, well, so be it.

52 / OVER THE HUMP

And so, finally, I replied, as enthusiastically as I could, "Why, that
sounds fine, sir."

General George did not overlook my hesitancy. He was kind enough
to tell me then and there that the Hump Airlift was of far greater stra-
tegic value than^ realized and that it had the wholehearted support of
the President of the United States and the commanding general of the
Air Corps.

"Our problem there is twofold," General George said. "Fkst, in
accordance with the commitment made by the President of the United
States to our Allies, we must raise the tonnage that we are airlifting to
China. Second, we must cut down on our accident rate. We're losing
too many crews, too many planes. These accidents are of great concern
to the President, to General Arnold, and to me." He paused, and looked
at me directly for a moment. "And finally. Bill, the morale is none too
good."

There was no need for me to remark that my two missions — ^increase
tonnage, decrease accidents — could be considered diametrically opposed
to each other. All I could do was submit respectfully.

"When do you want me to take over, sir?" I asked.

"Oh, in a few months. But I would like you to make a quick trip
over and back right now to get a firsthand idea of the problem you'll
have to face there."

Lieutenant Colonel James H. Douglas, Jr., who was sitting in as
General Smith's deputy, spoke up. "Fd like to go too, sir," he said.
"I have some problems out Acre, and Yd like to see the operation
firsthand.'*

"Sure thing, Jim," the General said.

As far as I was concerned, permission for Jim Douglas to accom-
pany me was the only pleasant result of the session. He was an oflBicer
of great ability with high standing at headquarters. I knew that I was
going to need an unending list of things once I got out on the Hump,
and Jim would be just the man to follow up my requests and requisi-
tions in Washington. My estimate of him was later borne out when he
became Secretary of the Air Force under President Eisenhower.

"One other thing," General George said just before the conference
broke up, "I have a positive reason for bringing Tom Hardin back to
the States. It's true that he has been m command of the Hump for only

The Hump / 53

a short time, but his total time overseas, in Central Africa and in the
Far East, totals two years. It's time he had a change of scene/'

Douglas and I made the trip in early June on my new Crescent Air-
line, via Gander, the Azores, Casablanca, Tripoli, Cairo, Abadan, and
Karachi. The date is easy to remember. While we were flying over North
Africa, we were listening to the details of the Normandy invasion on
the radio. Other than that, the flight was marvelously uneventful. There's
nothing like flying when you're the boss of the airline. My staff offi-
cers had arranged the junket well. We flew day and night, for a total of
sixty-two hours on the way out, sixty-flve hours on the return trip, and
everything went smoothly. We made eight stops, taking on gasoline
and a new crew at each point. Just like the old Pony Express riders, the
new crews came out to meet the plane with their clearances in their
hands, ready to get in and go. At no stop were we more than one hour
on the ground. I couldn't help but feel pride at the smoothness and
efficiency of this small part of my command. After all, this, along with
the Fireball Express, which operated over the South Atlantic, was far
and away the longest airUne in the world, and it was operating as though
it had been in business for years instead of a few months.

There was one tiny drawback: The big C-54 had only one bunk
available. I suppose that, as the boss, I could have claimed it, but I
never liked to operate that way. Jim Douglas and I matched for it, and he
won. And so the lieutenant colonel got to go to bed each night, while
I, shiny star and all, tried to catch cat naps back in the cargo com-
partment, lying down on a few GI blankets on the floor between two
big new B-29 engines being hauled out to the CBI.

We spent only a few days with the India-China Division, but that
was enougih to give me an idea of the fantastic confusion I was coming
into. The territory itself was enormous: From Karachi eastward to the
bases deepest m China was some three thousand miles. In India my
northern boundary would be the great wall of the Himalayas in Tibet,
the southern the Indian Ocean; in China the boundaries were the Jap-
anese. And the command was three-dimensional. It extended in depth
from the fetid, sweltering river bottoms of tropical India to the barren
crags and glaciers atop the towering peaks of the highest mountains
in the world.

In many parts of India, particularly on toward the west, a thousand

54 / OVER THE HUMP

mUes or more from the front, life went on as usual as though there
were no war. But in China and Burma, men were fighting and dying.
On this first brief visit I borrowed a C-47 with crew and flew over the
mountains from one of the advance bases in the Assam Valley to land
at the anrstrip at Myitkyina. At that moment elements of General Joseph
W, Stilwell's Allied Forces held the field, but the Japanese held the town.
Chinese soldiers were dug in along the airstrip, firing away at the
enemy. Somewhat self-consciously, like a sidewalk superintendent watch-
ing construction workers on a new building, I climbed down from the
plane and walked along the edge of the strip, watching the Chinese
soldiers shoot. At the end of the strip itself, behind a crude embank-
ment of loose dirt, Dr. Gordon Seagraves, the famous Burma surgeon,
had a field hospital going, attending to the wounded. Some fifteen
Burmese nurses, extremely pretty girls who seemed so out of place
among the dead and dying, were helping him. Many of them, and Dr.
Seagraves hhnself, were performing emergency operations on their
patients. Many Chinese soldiers lay around on stretchers waiting their
turn, while the bearers were constantly bringing in more. Fighter planes
were coming in and taking off right over our heads; our shells and
bombs were burstmg in and over the town. In all the confusion Dr.
Seagraves was perfectly calm. We talked for a moment as the stretcher-
bearers took one patient away from the open-air operating table and
brought on another. The new patient had half his knee shot away.

"Now back in America," the doctor said as he examined the wound,
"we'd just go ahead and amputate this leg without hesitation. But in
China this man would be no good with just one leg — ^he couldn't sur-
vive economically. So"— he was beginning to go to work on it— "I'll
try to patch this one up. It'll be stiff, but hell be able to get around."

There was nothing I could accomplish there, and so we left. But the
trip gave me positive proof that within the limits of my conunand men
were killing men.

Douglas and I spent only a few days in the theater, but they were
enough to give me a pretty good idea of what I was getting into. I did
not see much of the Hump itself on that first trip; I was flown over it,
but there was an overcast that day. I looked at the tonnage figures. In
January of that year, thirteen thousand tons of materiel, had been air-
lifted over the Hump. In May, the monfli before I arrived, the figure had

At Orly Field, Harold Talbot, then secretary of the Air Force, and Gen-
eral Nathan Twining, USAF Chief of Staff, are greeted by General
Tunner, Commander-Chief, USAFE and Lauris Norstad, Deputy Su-
preme Commander for Air, SHAPE.

During the Berlin Airlift Brit-
ish Foreign Minister Ernest
Bevin chats with General
Lucius D. Clay, Military Gov-
ernor of Germany, and General
Tunner at Tempelhof An: Force
Base.

■ United States Air Force Photograph

A lonely Chinese airfield shows the tremendous difference in cargo trans
porting techniques. The "very old" and the "very new" (at that time)
were outlined clearly in the "Hump" campaign.

United States Air Force Photograph

In the India-China Division of the Air Transport Command every ounce
of energy was necessary to accomplish the huge job that had to be done.
Despite the obvious primitive methods, the job did get done — and well.

The transport business was able to accommodate all sorts of help in those
difficult days during the India-China campaign. Here, an elephant dem-
onstrates his fork-lift technique.

This veteran C-54 shows the effects of the much publicized — and severe
— "Hump" weather. No amount of washing, could remove the dimples
caused by heavy hail on the skin of the aircraft. Serial numbers were often
peeled off.

This is just a small insight into the amount of human labor that was
necessary to build the airfield in the India-China Command. Earth was
moved in the same fashion as it had been for thousands of years. Also,
note rollers pulled by crew.

United States Air Force Photograph

Evacuation scene at Syichwan Airfield, China, with Chinese sentry guard-
ing tires and other equipment and baggage that was ready to be loaded on
Curtiss C-46 transports.

United States Air Force Photograph

Note C-54 in background of this photo. Construction of an unloading
parking ramp continues as usual at Tegel Airfield in the French sector of
Berlin. Aircraft, stationed at Fassberg RAF station, maintained a con-
stant stream of trafl&c.

At this USAF hospital in Korea, a helicopter arrives from a forward
Mobile Army Surgical Hospital with two wounded soldiers fastened in
the litter-baskets on its side.

United States Air Force
Photographs

A sign at the Chanyi Airfield in China, on the Chinese side of the
"Hump," said, "You made it again — good work." And you were espe-
cially fortunate each time the job was successfully completed to be able
to get a smoke.

Multicolored parachutes blossom into the skies of northwest Korea,
near Unsan, as the U.S. Far East Air Force Combat Cargo Command
completes a drop of 80,000 pounds of ammunition and supplies to the
ROK First Division.

United States Air Force Photograph

Familiar sight of the Taj Mahal greeted weary airmen of the India-
China Division of Air Transport Command. This structure, considered
by many the "most beautiful building in the world," contrasted sharply
with the destruction of war.

United States Air Force Photograph

General Tunner discusses plans with King ibn-Saud of Saudi Arabia for
use of Dhahran Airfield by USAFE forces. Also shown, at left, is U.S.
Ambassador Wadsworth. : ^^^j;^

United States Air Force
Photograph

General Tunner greets Colonel Hamilton Heard, who had just returned
to Calcutta from a successful conference in China with General Chen-
nault. Colonel Gordon Rust, of the General's staff, looks on.

Retirement ceremony at Scott AFB in Illinois closes one phase of long
and happy service to country. General Tunner (shown here with his
daughter) is joined by Congressman L. Mendel Rivers and General
Thomas White, Chief of Staff, USAF.

The Hump / 55

fallen to eleven thousand, although June was e^qpected to show an in-
crease, and did. But these were not the unportant figures to me then.
It was the accident rate which most impressed me — ^with horror! In
January of 1944 there were two accidents (actually L968) per every
thousand hours flown. Every two hundred trips over the Hump we lost
an airplane. For every thousand tons flovTn into China, three Americans
gave their Uves.

Not only was the accident rate alarming, but most of the accidents
were washouts — ^total losses, with planes either flying into mountain
peaks or going down in the jungle. In many of the cases m which there
was reason to believe that some or all crew members had been able
to parachute from their planes, the men were never seen again. The
jungle had simply swallowed them up. The combination of a high acci-
dent rate with the hopelessness of bailing out was not conducive to
high morale in the flying crews.

Morale was quite low in some parts of the Division, particularly in
the Assam Valley among the ground personnel. For the non-flymg GI's
there was no definite rotation program and they had less chance of being
rotated home than members of the flight crews.

Living conditions were generally bad. I had already read much about
them in reports that had come back to the States. Men lived crowded
in tents or bamboo huts known as bashas, which frequently had dht
floors and insect-ridden thatched roofs. This in a land of heat, high
humidity, almost constant ram, and mud everywhere. Supplies of just
about everything were short— plumbmg fixtures, lumber, water pumps,
and wking. These shortages reached a stage where efficiency and proper
functioning of the base were affected. The latrines of ICD will probably
be remembered longest for the shortage of toilet paper. Radios coming
into the States testified to the gravity of the shortage. One phrased it:
Situation bad at Tezpur and MisamarL Evidently the Quartermaster was
beset by similar demands. A reassuring note was struck in a radio to
Colonel Hardin then Commander of the Assam Valley Stations: Quarter-
master aware of toilet paper shortage. A large quantity coming by
water. After mail call when newspapers and magazines from home came
in, the motto of the day was ''Read 'em and wipe."

Supplies of proper clothmg, scouring powder, and fly-screening for the
kitchens thwarted all efforts to maintain standards of sanitation and

56 / OVER THE HUMP

living. I recall Theodore White's article for Life ms^azine, written in
December, 1943:

The food is wholesome but dull beyond imagination. There can be
little fresh meat because local cattle are sacred, local pigs are in-
fected with trichinosis, and there are no refrigerator cars available
on the railways. Eighty per cent of the food the Americans eat is
shipped from the outside — Spam, till it runs from the ears: canned
fish, caimed corned beef, canned hash, wooden bread, grits.

Then he said about the PX's:

PX supplies are even lower than in China and the PX supplies are
a vital factor in morale. Only rarely can you buy candy or books or
magazines; you can't even get sufficient razor blades or shaving
soap. Clothing is insufficient — sometimes shirts are raffled off by
the PX when they come in because there is no equitable method
of distribution.

Certainly C-Rations, Spam, and dehydrated potatoes composed the
bulk of every meal — ^three times per day. PX supplies were practically
nonexistent. There was no such thing as a soft drink or ice.

General George, in Washington, had wired in desperation to the
ICD Commander:

Intelligence at . . . reports ^'food conditions here are becoming
almost intolerable." It is idle ... to state that food conditions in other
units are similar . . . This is a disgrace. Give this Headquarters an
explanation of this report and tell what steps you are taking to im-
prove messing ...

General C. R. Smith had been sent out to India to look into these
many problems. In reply to a message he received from Washington,
Smith said:

In reference to your message about military appearance, it is difficult
to insist that men present a neat appearance when razor blades,
tooth brushes, and such articles caimot be purchased at PX's in an
area where there are no local stores. The Post Exchange situation
has shown no improvement of late.

The Hump / 57

At the advance base to which we returned after my first trip over
the Hump, I shook off the contingent of officers following me around
and strolled through the living areas of the GI's by myself. Although
prepared, I was shocked by what I saw— the reports were still quite valid.

Men off duty lounging aimlessly around reflected their living condi-
tions. Many had beards and handlebar mustaches; this was all right, but
some just hadn't shaved for several days. Their uniforms showed the
lack of laundry and were badly worn. They were sprawled around in
front of tiieir bashixs, some playing cards, some reading tattered maga-
zmes, most just sittmg. Few showed any sign of common courtesy, much
less military courtesy, as I walked by. Those who noticed me at aU merely
looked up with expressionless faces. They didn't even stir, much less
stand up and salute. I began stopping to talk briefly with each
group, asking such questions as how long they had been in the theater,
what their duties were. Most stayed where they were, answering me m
monosyllables, with bored expressions on thek faces. One or two would
laboriously stagger to their feet and give me a sickly smile.

"Weren't you trained to stand up when your boss comes around to
see you?*' I asked one group. I wasn*t being nasty or even sarcastic.
I really wanted to know. After a grunt of acquiescence, I asked, "Well,
why don't you do it here?"

"Nobody told us to," was the answer.

In this unhappy and unclean environment lived the mechanics
to whose maintenance were entrusted the lives of our fliers, the supply
men whose job it was to keep spare parts on hand and available, and
all the other members dt that huge complex necessary to keep planes
flying — and flying safely:

The reasons for all this was certainly not the fault of top commanders
of the ICD who had been and were working their hearts out to ac-
complish the mission. The reason was simply India, the ICD and the
Chma-Burma-India theater were at the end of the United States pipeline.
Parts, equipment, supplies as well as adequate personnel, were just not
being pumped through to the end.

On the way back home, flying halfway around the world again, I
found myself anticipating taking over the command of that whole un-
happy operation. I had proved I could build an organization from

58 / OVER THE HUMP

scratch. Now I had the opportunity to take over a chaotic situation
and make something out of it.

I never doubted, not ever, that I would succeed. But this personal
eagerness to face the challenge was of course subordinate in my mind
to the realization of the airlift's great importance in the war effort.

I made it my business to learn the early history of the airlift, and the
reasons behmd it. There was no doubt but that this far-off, unheralded
innovation in logistics was one of the most vital operations of the war.
Just one of its accomplishments made it militarily worth while: By
means of the Hump we enabled the Chinese armies to keep up their
resistance, which in turn made it necessary for the Japanese to keep a
well-trained and well-equipped force of up to two million men in China.
And every Japanese soldier tied down in China was one less Japanese
soldier shooting at American soldiers, sailors, and Marines in the
islands of the Pacific,

But this was only a by-product of the original mission of the China
Airlift. When the Hump was first visualized it was in keeping with the
views expressed by President Roosevelt on February 25, 1942, tiiat "it
is obviously of the utmost urgency . . . that the pathway to China be
kept open." At the time it was considered that China was the only
possible base for the eventual counterattack against Japan. It was abso-
lutely vital that China be kept in the war.

In early 1942 no thought whatever was given to aklift anywhere in
the world, much less over the remote and fcMrbidding terrain that lay
between India and China. Allied hopes lay instead in the conventional
transportation of supplies overland, via the Burma Road. This narrow
track, for much of its length only wide enough to handle a single lane
of traffic, twisted and turned over the mountains from upper Burma to
Kunming, a distance of over five hundred miles. Supplies for China
came in through the port of Rangoon, and were then shipped by rail-
road north to Lashio, where the road began. The Burma Road was a
fantastic accompUshment of engineering and road building, but it could
never have served as the sole means of logistics for both the Chinese
armies and the American troops eventually based in China.

But it was all we had at the beginning of the war, at least in the
minds of the high command, and the fall of Rangoon to the Japanese
in March of 1942 was a crushing blow to Allied hopes. Some frantic

The Hump / 59

planning obviously followed the loss of the port. The solution finally
chosen seems, in retrospect, almost incredible, yet at the same time
it shows the imagmation and daring used by the early pioneers in air-
lift. Under this plan supplies would be brought in to Calcutta, then
shipped a thousand miles over prunitive raihroads to Sadiya, far up the
Brahmaputra Valley and the easternmost point in India. From there
the supplies would be airlifted two hundred miles, over the Naga Hills
southward to Myitkyina, on the Irrawaddy River. There they would
be loaded onto barges, and floated down the Irrawaddy to Bhamo, a
point on the Burma Road still far, far from Kunming. A combination
of narrow-gauge raihoad, airlift, and barge — all in order to begin the
truck haul over the Burma Road! Extensive preparations for the plan
were actually begun. Engineers were rushed to Myitkyina to begin the
construction of the hard-surfaced airfield. And then the Japanese put
an end to this brave but tortuous plan by capturing Bhamo, then
Myitkyina, and then Lashio. There was now no other way to get sup-
plies into China except by airplane from the Assam Valley itself all
the way to Kunming, over the mountains and jungles of northern Burma.

Though there was sunply no other recourse, I still can't help but
feel great admiration for those desperate Army Air Corps planners
who proposed to do what had never been contemplated before. Remem-
ber that once the airlift got under way, every drop of fuel, every
weapon, and every round of ammunition, and 100 per cent of such
other diverse suppUes as carbon paper and C-rations, every such item
used by American forces in Chma was flown in by airlift. Never m the
history of transportation had any community been supplied such a large
proportion of its needs by air, even in the heart of civilization over
friendly terrain. Yet this was achieved in the Himalayan Airlift, under-
taken with no previous experience and under the most difficult condi-
tions. Begun when ak transportation of heavy cargo was in its very
infancy, carried on with steady increase in spite of the enemy and
formidable weather conditions, and over the most menacing terrain, all
this half a world away from home, the Hump Airlift proved, forever,
the efficacy of ah: transportation.

After the Hump, those of us who had developed an expertise in air
transportation knew that we could fly anything anywhere anytime.

But in those early days of 1942 there were no service experts m air

60 / OVER THE HUMP

transportation. At first the responsibility for airlifting supplies into China
was given to the United States Tenth Air Force, headquartered in India.
Our logistic planners did not know then what they should know now,
that combat commands do not make the best operators of air trans-
portation. The Tenth Air Force, under Major General Lewis H.
Brereton, had its hands full in those first few months of the war wilh
just holding its own against the onrushmg Japanese. To headquarters,
which command fighting forces, either strategic or tactical, air trans-
portation seems easy. Too late it frequently develops that it is not. The
Hump, even in those early days, was a complex job. Distances alone
made the operation fantastically diflBcult. The distance from the United
States to the theater itself made for impossible delays. In the beginning
the great proportion of both men and equipment went by sea; the
journey could take up to six months. In the early part of the war the
port of debarcation was Karachi, fifteen hundred nailes across India —
by primitive railroads of varying gauges from the Assam Valley. The
ports of Calcutta and Bombay, of course, were much closer, but at that
time there was a quite reasonable fear that they might fall to the
Japanese.

And finally, once materiel destined for China had reached the Assam
Valley, the nearest point to Chma jfrom which we could safely operate,
there was still a distance of 550 miles over towering peaks and for-
bidding jungle to the rough airfields of western China.

The problems were difficult enou^ for those few men who had
experience with, or interest in, air transport. For those who tried to
operate it with their left hands it was impossible. The first cargo-carry-
ing flight was made over the Hump on April 8, 1942, with a load of
high-octane gasoline destined for the planes of then Lieutenant Colonel
James H. DooUttle, who led the famous bombmg attack on Tolq^o
from an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean on April 18. During April
and May, under command of the Tenth Air Force, a handful of planes,
mostly C-47's, flew a total of 308 tons to China. By August the
monthly figure had reached 700 tons, but this was certainly not going to
keep the Chinese in the war.

In Washington Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's envoys were putting
pressure on both civilian government heads and the military. Trouble
shooters were dispatched to India to find out what the difficulty was.

The Hump / 61

Two separate reports put the blame not only on the lack of everything
— aircraft, proper maintenance, fields, personnel— but on the defeatist
attitude of the oflBcers entrusted with the job. Cyrus R. Smith, Deputy
Commander of the Air Transport Command and then a colonel, studied
the reports and wrote a brilliant and solid proposal to the effect that if
the ATC were given the mission and let alone, it would get the job
done. Smith's proposal specified that all personnel, aircraft, main-
tenance facilities, and spare parts sent to the theater for the airlift to
China be assigned to the ATC, and nobody else. It specified that the
ATC have full control of the operation under tiie durect supervision
of General Arnold, not the theater commander. As Smith put it—

Tho principal experience of the Air Transport Command is in
ah- transportation, as contrasted with the experience of the theater
commander being principally in combat and in preparation for

combat The India^hma Ferry operation must be conducted

on the best standards of transportation if it is to have maxhnum
effectiveness.

It could not be said any plainer. The ATC was ordered to take over
the Hump, and it did so, on December 1, 1942. By that time the au:-
lift had already gone through two commanders.

The first commandiag officer of the ATC's new India-Chma Wing was
my old friend Colonel Edward H. Alexander, whose departure from the
early Ferrymg Command had left me with his job as executive officer
as well as my own job as personnel officer. Alex, the conscientious,
worrying type, who took a personal interest in the smallest details of
his command, worked day and night, night and day, on the myriad
complexities of that faraway operation. He was up against a mountain
of problems. He worked incessantly, but when he cleared up one
matter, two others rose up to take its place. Alex commanded the
Hump for ten months. He had become a sick man.

In the meantime, as an ATC operation, the India-China Wing had
been assigned a few more planes. But there was a shortage of crews.
The men were flying to the limit of their endurance, well over a hundred
hours a month over the world's worst run, but still planes were sitting
on the ground for want of crews to fly them. The monsoon season
closed down two of the three bases in operation in India, with a result-

62 / OVER THE HUMP

ing jam and confusion at Chabua, the one base remaining in operation.
Alex was still crying for more men, more planes. He got thirty new
planes — ^and they turned out to be C-46's.

This two-engme plane carried four tons, as opposed to the two-and-
a-half-ton payload of the C-47, but though it eventually proved to be
one of the work horses of the Hump, it was never as dependable. The
first models to arrive in the India-China Wing had not had aU the bugs
worked out. It was easy to lose an engine on take-off, and when you
did, you went straight down to e^qplode with four tons of high-octane
gasoline. It took the rugged conditions of the Hump to bring out the
worst of or Dumbo. Most of the bugs were eventually worked out,
though it was never a completely dependable plane. And in the mean-
time, C-46's were killing crews.

In the first month of ATC control, the Hump hauled eight hundred
net tons of cargo to China. The figures showed a steady increase up to
three thousand net tons in July of 1943, but Alex had promised that
he would deliver four thousand tons a month.

Again the repercussions. Brigadier General Clair F. Chennault, who
had performed such a brilliant job with the outnumbered and be-
leaguered China Air Task Force, now was commanding the Fourteenth
United States Air Force in China. For several weeks in the spring of
1943, lack of aviation fuel forced him to shut down all combat opera-
tions. General Chiang Kai-shek was unhappy, and Madame Chiang
came to Washington, where she appeared before Congress to plead for
more aid. President Roosevelt ordered that the tonnage be increased
up to ten thousand tons by September, and held there. To enable the
airlift to reach that figure, a promise was made of increasing the number
of airdromes in India to seven, and of a general increase in planes,
maintenance facilities, spare parts, and personnel. But not all that was
promised was forthcoming.

General George visited the Hump in September of 1943. One of
the results of that visit was the Fkeball Express, which he ordered me
to put into effect in order to rush vital spare parts from Miami to India.
Another change was to send General Alexander back temporarily to
the Caribbean command. He later commanded the ATC in the South-
west Pacific. Brigadier General Earl S. Hoag took over the command
of the India-China Wing, with Colonel Thomas O. Hardin as his deputy.

The Hump / 63

Hoag and Hardin put on a tremendous drive, and in December of 1943,
12,590 tons were delivered to China bases. The Wing was given a
presidential citation. Hardin, who received chief credit, was promoted
to brigadier general and given a month's leave. In April, 1944, he be-
came commander of the entire operation, now enlarged to the India-
China Division.

And he deserved it. Tom was a driver. He drove himself and he
drove his men. An excellent pilot himself, he expected the pilots under
him to get those planes through. He introduced night flying on the
Hump, although radio communication and navigational facilities were
nonexistent except at the terminals, and though means of lighting the
fields were crude. It was at this time the statement, "There's no weather
on the Hump," became the batfle cry. His planes went out in fair weather
or foul. According to a report made by C. R. Smith, planes flew whether
they met standard Air Corps specifications or not. "If Air Corps technical
orders were now in force, I doubt that there would be an akplane in the
air," Smith wrote.

War was raging in China. Supplies just had to get in or all would be
lost. There was no other way but over the Hump. The airlift had to go.

The tonnage mounted, but so did the accidents. Between June and
December, 1943, there were 155 aircraft accidents in the Division.
Crew fatalities alone, not including passengers, totaled 168. In Novem-
ber, there were 38 major accidents. It was safer to take a bomber deep
into Germany than to fly a transport plane over the Rockpile from one
friendly nation to another. Complaints and protests from wives and
parents and relatives of men lost on the Hump began pouring in to the
President and the Congress. The President sent for General Arnold,
General Arnold sent for General George, and General George sent for
me. Alexander had paved the way, Hoag and Hardin had increased ton-
nage, and now it was up to Tunner to continue the increase in tonnage,
but at less cost in American lives.

Though I did not assume the commsind of the India-China Division
until August, 1944, I began preparing for it as soon as I returned to
my headquarters m Cincinnati from that first brief trip. I started out
with one distinct advantage, the full backing and support of General
George. When I reported in I told him, and Colonel Douglas backed
me up, that we could increase tonnage on the Hump and at the same

64 / OVER THE HUMP

time decrease accidents. But I also told him frankly that it was a tough
area in which to serve and a tough operation to conmiand. The Airlift
needed greater recognition from Washington. It needed higher priorities,
more spare parts, more personnel.

"And I'm also going to need your personal backing, sir," I told him.
"You were correct when you told me that we had serious morale prob-
lems there. I'm going to have to shake up the entire division, and I
know that you will be receiving complaints. Will you back me up?"

"You can count on me, Bill," he said. That was all I needed.

General George authorized me to take eight officers to my new
command. I immediately started lining them up. The first man I ap-
proached was Temple Bowen, one of my most valued staff officers in
the Ferrying Division. Bowen had been sent to me, when still a civilian,
by General George's deputy, Cyrus R. Smith. He was the epitome of
the American self-made man. I don't believe that he ever finished
grammar school, but he had gone far in the business world. He had
organized an airline serving Texas and Oklahoma, which American
Airlines bought out to obtain the routes he had pioneered and thus be-
come a transcontinental airline. This was how Smith, American's
president, had come to know him. After his airlines experience, Bowen
organized a bus company. When he came to me, his company owned
four hundred buses operating throughout his native Texas.

Smith had suggested that I could use Bowen in Supply. After an
interview of only a few minutes, I concurred. On the basis of his age
and experience Bowen was commissioned a major, and went to work for
me as Chief of Supply. He did such an excellent job that I gave him
the additional responsibility of Chief of Installations and Engineering.
When he became familiar with those duties, I added that of Chief of
Maintenance. He never complamed, and he got the job— all the jobs-
done.

Temple had a keen, businesslike mind. He was quiet and thoughtful.
In our staff meetings he was nearly always the last man to speak up
with his opinion, but that opinion would nearly always turn out to be
the basis for the eventual decision. When I asked him if he would like
to go to India with me, to carry on the same duties there that he had
been carrying on with the Ferrying Division, he not only acquiesced
without hesitation, but seemed grateful for the opportunity- When we

The Hump j 65

did arrive in India, incidentally, I found that Hardin's deputy com-
mander was in ill health and had to return to the States. I immediately
made Temple Bowen my deputy commander, or executive vice president.

Only a few days after I returned from the indoctrination trip to
India I received a telephone call from a Lieutenant Colonel Robert
Bruce White, requesting an interview. White was assigned to the Air
Corps Training Command, which of course had no foreign operations,
and was chafing at the bit because he wanted to go overseas. Like
many a rose bom to blush unseen, he was a good man buried in an
important but gjamorless headquarters. What impressed me about Bob
White right away was that he knew I was slated to command the Hump.
At the time, only a very few people in the Pentagon knew that I had
even been considered for the job, and the fact that it was now definite
was top secret. But White had managed to find it out. A man like that
comes in handy.

White had been a major in the Reserves before the war, and had
worked for Standard Oil of New Jersey in China. He must have been
outstanding as an executive. In the training command he had promoted
an mdustrial-type method of maintenance. It was his baby, and we had
hardly been talking two mmutes before he was enthusiastically describ-
ing the virtues of production-lme maintenance, or PLM. Well-educated,
soft-spoken, with a command of English that became almost poetic
on subjects he was enthusiastic about, White sat there in my office
and in thuty mmutes sold me on himself and on PLM. He explained
how from three to ten stations would be set up, each of which would
perform a specific mamtenance function. Airplanes would progress
from station to station as though on an assembly line. At Station No. 1,
for example, the inspection plates would be removed and the plane
given a thorough washing and cleaning, inside and out At the next
station another set of functions would be performed, at the next another,
and so on. At the last stop the plane would be buttoned up, the in-
spection plates returned to position, and the chief inspector would
make a final, rigorous inspection. If satisfied, he would approve it for
the test flight.

I knew full well that the maintenance I was going to get would
determine the success or failure of the operation. I must get the maxi-
mum performance out of the planes assigned to my command, or I

66 / OVER THE HUMP

would fail to do the job. PLM, with Bob White to put it in service and
make it work, might well be the answer. I checked on both with offi-
cers whom I could trust in the training command, and every response
was enthusiastic on both the man and the method. There was nothing
else to do but ask for him. I did.

The Trammg Command turned me down cold. They wanted Bob
White too.

I wrote a strong letter setting forth reasons why White could serve
his country better in the CBI than in Texas, and some sympathetic
officer in the Pentagon, himself doomed to sit at a desk in Washington
for the rest of the war, overruled the Traming Command and let White
join me on the Hump. Bob proved to be everything I had hoped for,
and more. For in addition to being a superb executive, he was also a
marvelous companion. Though he had great personal problems of his
own, he seemed to feel that everyone else in the world had found
personal happiness, and he was ^ad. In times of strain and stress,
particularly when far away from the drawing room, many men tend
to become profane, but the harshest epithet I ever heard Bob White
use was a quiet, heartfelt "Damn!'* Yet he had a backbone of unbend-
able aUoy. When sent out to conduct an investigation, nothing mattered
to him except the facts, and thaf s what his reports contained. He did
not consider such items as the rank of the person he might be criticizing,
or his own future. He just went ahead and put the facts on the line.

And then there was Red Forman, whom I had signed up in Memphis
and who was my most active reserve officer there. Red had been a
barnstormer and crop duster. When he first came to me he was the
youthful, red-headed owner of a skating rink and swimming pool in
Memphis, and he also owned his own private plane. Red liked the
ladies, and the ladies liked Red. Everybody liked Red, for diat matter;
he was by far the most popular officer who ever served with me. I
don't know of any man who spent fifteen minutes with Red Forman
who didn't come away with the belief that he had found a lifelong
friend.

Red was one of the finest pilots I ever knew. In technical matter,
he made it his business to learn every detail, and consequently spoke
with authority. I asked him, and he accepted immediately, to come
with me as Chief Pilot of the India-China Division. He would be the

The Hump / 67

over-all supervisor of every pilot on fhe Hump. Every pilot would be
checked out according to his specifications.

Another key man in my setup in India would be the Chief Statisti-
cian, and I knew the man I wanted. Early in my days in the Ferrying
Command a young man named Kenneth Stiles, who looked more like
an Eagle Scout than the second lieutenant he claimed to be, had come
in to my basement oflSce looking for a job.

"What can you do?" I asked.

"Statistics, sir," he answered promptly.

At that time, I was trymg to keep tab on the hundreds of airplanes
being ferried about the United States and overseas as well. I showed
him how I was doing it and asked if he thought he could improve it.
He said he thought he could.

"Do you think you could set up another system which will enable
us to keep track of the state of trainmg of our pilots?" I asked. "They
change status daily."

He said he thought he could do that too.

"Fine," I said. "There's a desk, and there's a chair."

"Oh, I can't do that, sir!" he cried. "I have to go back to New York
to tell my wife what I'm going to do — ^but I can be back in two days."

In two days he was back, and within a week he presented a statis-
tical program, complete in every detail, which simplified our work, cut
down on the number of people posting figures, and gave us the com-
plete situation at a glance.

Stiles was the youngest man on my staff. When he first joined, he
had Uttle practical experience in his field. But he was sound and
capable. When he spoke up at a meeting, we all listened, for we soon
found out that he knew what he was talking about. His talents were a
necessity in such a spread-out complexity as was the Hump at that
time. I was not at all happy with the statistical reports that had been
kept. We knew how many tons had been flown, how many trips and how
many planes, and we knew something about the accidents, but we did not
know enough. To conquer this problem, to save the lives of Americans,
to keep planes flying, we had to know exactly the causes of each accident.
We had to know what each base was doing — why one base had more
engine changes than another, why one took longer to load or unload an
auplane than another, why there was more illness, more morale problems

68 7 ovbr tub KVUP

at one base than another, why there was better production at one base
than another. In conjunction with my young, able, and inteUigent flymg
safety officer, Captain Arthur Norden, Stiles devised statistical programs
which would help us answer such questions as :

Was the accident due to structural failure, maintenance failure,
pilot failure, or crew failure, or airdrome or some other failure?

What airfields had the most accidents?

What type aircraft had the most accidents? What model?

Was there any similarity in the accidents under investigation? Any
sunilarity with other accidents?

What was the weather before, during, and after the accident?

What were the communications with the plane prior to the accident?

How did the accident rate of the base from which a certain accident
occurred compare to other bases with sunilar aircraft?

How did this base rate in its accident picture?

How did this type of aircraft rate in the over-all accident picture?

What was the over-all rating of this base in its maintenance per-
formance?

What was the rating of this base in regard to checks of pilots by the
Division check pilot?
How many Hump hours did the pilot have who had the accident?
How many total hours did he have?

What was the esthnate of the local check pilot as to the proficiency
of the crew?

How many flying hours did each crew member have?
Who checked off the pilot who had the accident and certified him
as capable?

Who checked off the maintenance of the aircraft as O.K.?

What was the caliber of morale at the particular base?

If the accident was due to maintenance or structure, were there any
similarities to this and others? If due to pilot error, what, if any,
idiosynarades in flight characteristics did the plane have?

How did the pilot and crew spend tiie preceding forty-eight hours?
Did they have ample rest? Were they over-flying?

Or had they been flying too little during the past month? The past
three months?

To answer these and many other questions, Captain Stiles set up

T/ie Hump / 69

statistical systems which were certainly the best in effect in any theater
at the time, and are still good today. Stiles went on to become a major
general in the Reserve, and a vice president of General Dynamics
Corporation. Norden became president of Seaboard Western Airlines,
a corporation of great value to the United States during the Korean
war.

Another youthful-appearing member of our staff was Lieutenant
Colonel Hamilton Heard, whose pink cheeks and blue eyes gave him
the air of a perennial freshman. Actually Hammie graduated from
Harvard in the same year that I graduated from West Point, 1928. He
was Boston, Groton, and Harvard in dress, speech, and attitude. Very
proper, and a mature thinker, he was thoroughly liked by everybody.
When the headquarters of the Ferrying Command moved from Wash-
ington to Cincinnati, I kept Hammie in Washington as a kind of trouble
shooter there. He did an excellent job. Now I pulled him out of Wash-
ington and, with General George's permission, sent him on ahead as
a one-man advance party to the India-China Division.

Another of my selections was Gordon M. Rust, a big man with
an unsmiling face. Rust, a graduate of Amherst, was our scholar, our
intellectual. He was a constant optimist. He was also an idealist and
an excellent writer. I would need a man to handle communications
intelligence and public relations, who was also able to fill in as an
administrator when needed, and Rust was a natural choice.

My two remaining officers were both lawyers, both from Little Rock.
Colonel Dudley Coates, an able Yale graduate, had served well as chief
of personnel for the Ferrying Division, and Lieutenant Colonel Ike
Teague was his deputy. When we reached the ICD, Coates became my
liaison officer with the theater staff in China, and Teague became my
chief of personnel.

This was my staff, my board of directors. I had one more to choose,
and I asked for Colonel Andrew Cannon. Andy was one of those men
born to fly. He'd been a stunt pilot before he'd been brought into the
Ferrying Division at the very beginning by General Olds. Cannon was
from New Hampshire, but I always thought he talked like a Texan.
Whenever you saw Andy with a group of people, you could bet that he
would be the one doing the talking. He was quick-witted and clever,
and it was a pleasure to listen to hmi. As Cannon went up the ladder,

70 / OVER THE HUMP

he established a reputation for being loyal to his men, and I learned
through personal experience that they were loyal to him. Bright and
early one Monday morning, back in 1941, I received a report that a
brand-new fighter plane had been seen cutting up shenanigans over the
beach at Long Beach, California, on Sunday afternoon. The first report
said the pilot had been flying it upside down with his head just ten feet
over the waves. Somehow or other that sounded like Cannon to me,
although I thought the ten feet was probably an exaggeration. I assigned
an officer to investigate the occurrence. His first report was to the effect
that it was no exaggeration at all. Some witnesses said the pilot's head
had been only eight feet over the waves.

When it came to identifying the pilot, however, my investigating officer
ran into a stone wall. Whoever it was, nobody was going to snitch on
him. It just so happened that at the time I was looking for a new com-
mander for our Long Beach airbase, a man who could lead and control
the group of hard-flying young pilots, one who would have the loyalty
of his men. I decided to call off the investigation. The investigatmg officer
was just wasting time, and it would also now be somewhat embarrassing
if my new base conunander, Andy Cannon, were unmasked as the mys-
terious stunt ffier. Anyway, he was not endangermg anyone's life but his
own and m those days stunting was a mark of a keen pilot.

For the Hump, I needed that same kind of commander for the Bengal
Wing. This wing would have only one mission, to fly the Hump, and I
wanted a man I could count on to conunand it. Andy Cannon was my
choice, and he_ didn't let me down. But it was not until years later that
he finally admitted to me, with a grin, that he had indeed been that stunt
flier at Long Beach that Sunday afternoon.

I intended to put a lot of eggs m that one Bengal basket. The Hump
Airlift had begun, you recall, with a small fleet of sturdy C-47's. Then
the C-46's had begun to come along, but although bigger and heavier,
with a greater capacity, OF Dumbo was still only a two-engme plane.
When an engine went out, as it too frequently did, you were left with
only 50 per cent of your original power, and on the bug-ridden C-:46
that wasn't enough. What the Hump needed was a plane bigger than
the C-46, but with the dependability of the C-47 — and four engines.
Fortunately such a plane was now in existence, and would soon be avail-
able in quantity. I was personally convinced of its dependability, for I

The Hump / 71

had placed it in service on the Crescent Run and had watched it build
up millions of miles of service. It was the four-engined Douglas trans-
port, the DC-4, known to the Air Corps as the C-54.

Some years before, I learned later, an army general had seriously
asked Donald W. Douglas, president of Douglas Akcraft, which designed
and buUt the plane, "But what possible use could the United States Army
have for a four-engined transport?" Douglas had persisted, in spite of
that shortsighted attitude. Laid down in 1938, the plane was originally
scheduled for delivery to airlines in 1942. Three times bigger than the
C-47, but relatively easy to mamtam and extremely durable, it proved
itself in 1942 and 1943. It would be available in quantity soon after
I took command of the Hump. Andy Cannon's Bengal Wing would be
composed initially of one hundred C-54's and some fifty C-109's. Even-
tually it would be an all-C-54 operation.

The oflBcial history of the Army Air Forces in World War II reports
that with my assuming command of the ICD "the age of big busmess"
was under way, and continues as though my so-called businesslike
methods comprised something new in military operations. This is only
partially true. In the first place, my staff and I began preparing for our
mission in India and China weeks before we left the States. In the
second, although my methods may have smacked of big business, hard-
driving big busmess, they could also be found in military textbooks.
Since time inmiemorial the commander of a military unit from a com-
pany up has had a staff to advise him and carry out his orders. My con-
tribution was to carry the staff-concept to its fullest potential. I knew
that no halfway measures would Uck the problems we would meet on
the Hump — only an all-out concerted effort on the part of dedicated and
capable men working long hours seven days a week would bring success
m our mission. That is what I intended to get from my staff, and I
selected them accordingly.

A German general of some generations ago, when asked how he
assigned his personnel, replied he first determined if they were lazy or
industrious, intelligent or unintelligent. The conunandmg officer, he said,
shoiild be lazy smd intelligent. The man who is lazy and imintelligent
makes a good greeter, a front-office man. The man who is industrious
and unmteUigent — ^get rid of him. But the man who is both industrious
and intelligent is your staff officer.

72 / OVER THE HUMP

The perfect staff oflScer should be a man of many abilities, for he has
^many duties to perform. One is supervisory, for he must keep close
control over his opposite number m the field and on the bases, to insure
compliance with policies, regulations, programs, and standards of the
higher headquarters. He must be a clearing house of information, analyz-
ing and passmg along the ideas and techniques proved successful by
individual bases. There is, for example, only one best way to fly an air-
plane; there is only one best way to land, to take off, to fly or land with
one engine gone or in heavy turbulence. There is also one best way to
requisition a paper clip. The staff officer should constantiy be on the
lookout for the best way, recognize it, and push it along.

The staff officer must also remain in close contact with as good rela-
tions as possible not only with the officers m the field, but with those of
adjacent commands. He should be a good team man, and hold his
temper.

But above all else, he must be industrious and intelligent.

Long before we arrived in India, we had estabhshed a standard proce-
dure for staff meetings. My staff and I met not once a week or twice a
week, but seven times a week at 8 a.m. sharp. Attendance was compul-
sory, and every officer was expected to be prepared, even if he had to
devote the entire night to the preparation. As a matter of fact, no mem-
ber of my staff worked less than twelve hours a day, seven days a week.
No matter where or when you dropped in on them, in office, quarters, or
home, day or nigjit, you'd find them with other officers, in a meeting.
It seemed that everybody was always in a meeting.

Just as every member of my staff was always prepared, so, too, I
made it my business to be. When a meeting began at 8 a.m. sharp, I had
in front of me a list of the problems which needed to be taken up that
day with the appropriate staff officers. In actual operation, on the Hump,
our staff meetings were attended by some twenty officers. Frequently I
had questions to take up with all of them. My policy was to bring each
problem to the attention of the pertinent staff officer in turn. After I had
finished with each officer, I would ask if he had anything else to offer
before going on to the next. Some meetings were short, many were long.
But regardless of how much or how little tune was left in the day follow-
ing the meeting, we were all, every member of the staff and myself,
charged with the duty of completing the assigned tasks for the day. And

The Hump / 73

if the days did not offer enou^ hours to perform our tasks and to sleep,
too, well, we had not come to India to sleep.

But to repeat, these staff meetings had begun long before we left the
United States. From the time they became members of my staff, my
hand-picked men were busy. My personnel officer, Dud Coates, got busy
lining up good people. Bob White began setting up a plan for production-
line maintenance. Temple Bowen got busy requisitioning not only des-
perately needed spare parts, but the new DDT powder for the mosquitoes
and — ^unknown in India — concentrated Coca Cola for the men.

While we were having these board of directors-type meetings back in
the States, Hammie Heard was in India, scouting around, looking for
trouble spots. Thanks to that impeccable backgroxmd and the ways of
a gentleman in every respect, Hammie was the perfect man for the job.
I'm sure that efforts were made to get under his skin in hopes that he
would lose control of himself and act in an objectionable fashion, but
I'm equally sure that he maintamed perfect control of himself at all
times. He did not send running reports, but held them until he could sit
down and give them to me in person after my arrival.

This constant and thorou^ preparation for every phase of the mission
it would be possible to control was particularly essential in this opera-
tion, if only because we would encounter so many phenomena we would
not be able to control. Weather, for example, and terrain. Enemy activ-
ity, and dangerous tribesmen and predators.

The weather on the Hump changed from minute to minute, from mile
to mile. One end was set down in the low, steamy jungles of India; the
other in the mile-high plateau of western China. And between the two
Ues the Rockpile, a law unto itself. In addition to the Hump proper, of
course, the India-China Division had the weather all across our three
thousand-mile wide area to contend with, from areas flooded by two
hundred inches of rainfall a year to the dust storms of the deserts, and
from the tropical climate of the south to the blizzards of the high moun-
tains to the north.

But the Hump itself offered variety enough in weather. Let's look at
it season by season, beginning with the worst — spring. That's when the
thunderstorms begm building up out of nowhere, piUng up over the
peaks and ridges, more and more until they towered over us. We had
planes go up to our maximum ceiling of thirty thousand feet and still

74 / OVER THE HUMP

they were in the clouds. Above fifteen thousand feet icing conditions
would set in. And since at fifteen thousand feet some of those clouds had
rocks in them, this meant we must constantly fly in icing conditions.

In these clouds, over the entire route, turbulence would build up of a
severity greater than I have ever seen anywhere else in the world, before
or since. Winds of as much as one hundred miles an hour, piling into
the steep barren slopes, would glance off to create updrafts over the
ridges, downdrafts over the valleys. Planes caught in a downdraft could
drop at the rate of five thousand feet per minute, then suddenly be
whisked upwards at almost the same speed. These tremendous storms'
would come on with great suddenness; there was no way of telling the
amount of turbulence within a cloud until you were in it. The worst
storm we ever had on the Hump occurred earlier than the usual spring
thunderstorms, in January, but its characteristics were the same. It
brought violent gusts and updrafts along with severe icing, sleet, and
hail. A one-hundred-mile-an-hour wind, howling across our east-west
routes directly from the south, blew planes far to the north among the
high Himalayas. Conditions were the same from fifteen thousand feet
to thirty-eight thousand feet— we couldn't get under, and we couldn't
get over.

A pilot named Thomas Sykes was trying to get through in a C-46 at
twenty-five thousand feet when suddenly a downdraft caught the plane
and a capricious gust flipped it over on its back. In a matter of seconds
he was at nineteen thousand feet, where another gust turned him right
side up again. A brown, barren mountain crag whizzed by, almost close
enough to touch. But Sykes brought his plane home safely.

Others were not so fortunate. The radio was filled with cries of "May
Day!" that day. Planes were blown so far north off course they crashed
into mountains pilots did not even know were within fifty miles. That
one storm took its toU of nine aircraft lost, and though some men were
able to bail out, eighteen crew members and nine passengers did not.
In addition to our losses, a Chinese civilian transport corporation lost
all of the three planes it put in the an: that day, and American tactical
commands lost three more. It was by far our most tragic day, and all
due to weather.

And that was the type of weather we could expect in the spring months
on the Hump. In May the strong westerly winds began to fade, to be

The Hump / 75

replaced by winds of variable direction. Early in the morning the clouds
would begin to form, but for several hours we could fly over them. By
noon, however, they usually joined together in a solid line, reaching up
to thirty thousand feet, and from then on it was strictly instrument flying.
In the area between the first ridge and the main Hump the thunder-
storms would contain particularly severe turbulence and ice.

The monsoon season, with its incredible amounts of rain and muggy,
humid weather over India, lasts from May to late October, and then
comes the fall. Then the weather is predominantly good over India and
Burma. This is by all means the best flying time of the year. In India
the dry season, from November until March, brings bright, clear, invig-
orating weather, in which it's great to be alive. The skies are blue and
crystal-clear and you can see for hundreds of miles. It's cool and brisk^;
and wonderful. Unfortunately it seemed that when the weather was good
in India, it was terrible in China.

In the early winter over most of the Hump good flying weather would
prevail until, usually, late January, but then the southwest winds would
begin coming in, increasing up to one hundred miles an hour, with
resulting vertical drafts. During the late but short, sharp winter, one cold
front after another would move down across India, to come up against
the Hump with a bang. There'd be heavy snowfalls on the mountain
peaks. Wings would ice up in the clouds.

Looking at the Hump weather on a year-round basis, it's easy to see
that it was no picnic at any time of the year. The combination of weather
and terrain would have made the Hump Airlift a difficult one even if the
route had been over the middle of the United States. Actually, of course,
it was located at the ends of the earth, and peopled with strange and
dangerous tribes, including the Japanese.

Though we could hardly be termed a combat command, the Japanese
did present a constant threat. They caused us the constant inconvenience
of having to fly longer and farther over higher mountains in order to get
around their salient pushing up from Rangoon to Myitkyina.

Their large-scale bombing raids were sporadic, and we usually man-
aged to get advance warning. One mornmg in March, 1944, a C-46,
piloted by a lieutenant named Clark, with Lieutenant Lucius as his
copilot, took off for China with a heavy load of gasoline in drums and
proceeded toward the first range at an altitude of nineteen thousand feet.

76 / OVER THE HUMP

Ten thousand feet below the tops of thick, white cumulus clouds were
reaching up toward them. Qark, scanning the skies routinely, suddenly
noticed a formation of planes to the left and high. It appeared to consist
of some twenty bombers and about the same number of fighter escorts.

"Hqr, look," Qark said, nudging Lucius. "Reckon they're Japs?"

Lucius had no time to answer, for just at that moment, he saw two
fightCTs coming in fast on them from the rear. There was no question
as to their identity. They were Japanese Zeros. Even as Lucius hollered
a warning, the lead plane peeled off and came barrelmg in, machine guns
spitting fire. Over the roar of the motors came a sound the fliers had
never heard before, but which was unmistakably the sound of bullets
hitting the plane.

dark acted instantaneously, by reflex. He pufled the throttles all the
way back and shoved the control column fufl forward. The big C-46
went into a dive. Clark shot a quick glance to his left, saw the big red
ball of the Japanese rising sun shining at him, and gave another yank
on the throttle. But now he had another problem. With the big plane
screaming earthward, the propeUers were spinning so fast, pulling the
engines along with them, that the engines might bum out. Clark tried
to control the revolutions per minute with the switches controlling the
props, but they didn't hold. He tried the manual prop control, and that
didn't work either. The needle of the air-speed indicator was now aU
the way around, and stuck there. The engines were protesting, and to
reach the cloud cover with burned-out engines would be little improve-
ment. As a last resort Qark feathered the props.

Not many C-46's have been put through a two-mile dive. Safely in
the clouds, Clark leveled off, unfeathered tiie props, and sighed with
relief as the engines took hold. The engineer. Sergeant Horace Emrick,
and the radio operator. Private Paul Witt, came up to report that the
Japanese bullets had plugged several of the gasoline drums and the cargo
compartment was ankle-deep in high-octane gas. Emrick had been tossed
around in the plane during the dive and had a gash in tiie top of his
head, but otherwise no one was injured. As Clark made radio contact
with Chabua and reported the approaching enemy planes, the others
began dumping the gasoline drums.

dark headed back in the general direction of his base, staymg in the
clouds for cover. Beneath him, he knew, were tiie Naga HiUs, and it was

The Hump / 77

a ticklish proposition staying above the tops oif the cloud-obscured
mountains but beneath the open, Zero-patrolled sky. As they flew along,
they came to a large rift in the clouds and ventured out into it. A Zero
was circling above. Clark turned his plane on the tip of its tail and
skedaddled back into the clouds. They played this game of hide and
seek all along the line of the Naga Hills. Finally, when the big plane
peeped out of its cover, the air was clear of Zeros, and Clark headed
across the Assam Valley toward home.

But now there was another problem to contend with. The right rear
gas tank was registering too low, which was a clear indication that gas
was leaking out through bullet holes. If this were true, the torching of
the right engine on landing would surely ignite the fuel. And the whole
plane reeked of gasoline fumes. All Clark could do would be to cut out
the engme and make a smgle-engine landing. He radioed his base of his
intentions, and proceeded on in. As the hastily assembled emergency
crews watched and prayed, Clark slipped in for a successful landing.

And then he learned that, thanks to him and his crew, there had been
good hunting over the valley that day. His first radio call had alerted
the fighter command, and scores of our own P-40's had taken off and
climbed high to await the oncoming visitors. When the Japanese flotilla
came out over the valley, expecting to take the American bases by
surprise, the American fighters pounced. It was a happy slaughter. Our
boys shot down fourteen enemy bombers, with two more listed as prob-
able kills, and fourteen fighters with three probables in addition. Twenty-
eight sure kills out of a total of thirty-eight enemy planes. Not a bad
day's work, and all due to the unarmed transport which gave the alert.

Most of our enemy troubles in the air came from single planes. Fre-
quentiy, at both the advance bases in India and nearly all bases in Chma,
a Japanese pilot would decide to make a nuisance of himself and come
in to strafe the field. Sometimes they dropped anti-personnel fragmenta-
tion bombs.

In the early days of the Hump the Japs nearly bagged some real brass
at Sookerating Base. One of the first in use, this base was constructed
on the grounds of the old Sookerating Tea estate through the courtesy
of the Dum Dum Tea Company. The main portion of the runway was
laid out on what had formerly been a golf course and race track at which
the British tea planters whiled away their spare time. When the field

78 / OVER THE HUMP

was completed, the two highest-ranking officers in the theater, General
Joseph W. Stilwell and General Sir Archibald Wavell, his British counter-
part, made their first formal inspection of the base. As the entire party
of officers was out on the runway, a ffight of Zeros came in over the
treetops, machine guns blasting. Slit trenches were conveniently avail-
able, and for a moment there, all the Japanese pilots could see were the
seats of the pants and the soles of the shoes of generals and sergeants
alike as they dived in.

At another part of the field near the three shiny new DC-3's which
had brought in the visiting generals, a plane was being loaded with drums
of high-octane gas, while its crew of one officer and one enlisted man
stood by waiting. Without a second thought, the crew hopped in then*
plane and took off. Ducking and dodging, hugging the treetops and
sHding through valleys, the plane proceeded on away from the field,
pursued by the Zeros. Though bullets riddled the plane, it reached its
destmation safely, and in the futile chase, the Japanese had left the three
shiny new DC-3's without a scratch.

Sometimes Japanese fighters followed a cargo plane in to strafe it
and the field as it came in for a landmg. At our field in Chanyi, near
Kunming, several C-47's happened to come in at the same time early
one evening, all with wing lights on, and were circlmg to land. The
soldier manning the radio control tower at the time thought the Number
Three plane in the circle looked a trifle odd m the evening dusk.

"Hey, you up there,** he said into his mike, "Number Three m the
circle. Who are you?"

No answer. The first plane landed, and the unidentified plane became
Number Two. "Hey, you. Number Two," the operator shouted, again
demanding identification. Still no answer.

And then the plane was Number One. "Number One, Number One,
who are you?" the operator screamed.

Loud and clear a voice boomed out, speaking perfect English. "I'm a
Japanese pilot in a Japanese plane, and I'm coming in with a load of
brass!** tihe mystery pilot shouted, and came diving across the field drop-
ping his load of fragmentation bombs one by one.

My commander in China was on the runway just ready to take off in
his unarmed C-47. He heard the tower conversation and looked back
just in time to see the first bomb droppmg. He gave his engines full throt-

The Hump / 79

tie and roared down the runway with the bombs following him. He got off
successfully but not without loss of a few heartbeats. After all the excite-
ment, it turned out that no one was hurt in this raid.

One of the most successful enemy actions in the early days caused
the operation a tragic loss in brave men and a resulting blow to morale.
It happened on December 10, 1943. On that one day, two planes, operat-
ing as the newly organized Search and Rescue unit, were shot down. One
of the planes was a B-25 medium bomber piloted by Captain John E,
Porter, a colorful character knoAvn as "Blackie" to all the crews flymg
the Hump. Blackie, a former stunt pilot, was a dashing, excitement-
seekmg fellow who found a mission made to order for his talents m the
early Search and Rescue organization. He surrounded himself with more
barnstorming types who'd borrow or actually steal planes to go out on
search missions, but he and his crew, known all over the Hump as
Blackie's Gang, were by all odds the most colorful. Whenever flymg
between jagged peaks, down narrow gorges, or skimming over the tops
of the jungle trees looking for crashes or survivors became boring,
Blackie might just take a few minutes off to put a show of acrobatics
on over a field, or to buzz and literally fly circles around the slower
aircraft as they droned on across the Hump. Several pilots who did not
seem to appreciate the humor of being missed by inches turned in re-
ports, but Blackie was apparently never disciplined.

During one period Blackie had two C>47's assigned to his rescue
outfit, and he had each armed with two Bren .30 machine guns. The
copilot held one in his lap, ready to fire it from his window, while the
other gun was kept in the cargo area. Members of the crew would open
up the cargo door and blast away. At times they also carried .45-caliber
Thompson submachine guns and hand grenades. On one occasion
Blackie and his boys, in one of the combat C-47's, came upon a Japanese
Zero sitting in a meadow, with the pilot making emergency repairs.
Blackie ckcled, put the nose down, and then, firing his Tommy gun
out his own window and his crew firing from the open cargo door, he
roared past the sitting duck. That pass completed, he pulled the C-47
sharply up, as though it were a fighter plane, and came around again
for another run. All in all, they made seven passes, killing the pilot and
riddling the plane.

80 / OVER THE HUMP

That night Blackie's Gang painted a Japanese flag on the nose section
of their plane.

Less than a month later, with Lieutenant James Spain as copilot,
Blackie went out on a routine flight in a B-25. Near the tip of the Jap-
anese salient, the crew spotted three flights of Zeros and fighter bombers
proceeding northward toward the Allied area of activity. Blackie radioed
the fighter command and proceeded on. Not long after that he saw a
flight of fighters approaching, and assumed they were the American
planes he had summoned. He flew toward them, passing through a
cloudbank. When he came out of the clouds he saw, too late, that the
fighters were Zeros. They pounced on the plane and, despite Blackie's
evasive actions, many of thek bullets found their mark. The plane began
to burn. Blackie gave the command to bail out, but the intercom system
had been shot out, and no one heard him. He headed toward the nearest
field. Zeros still hanging on his tail. One engme was gone completely,
and flames were skirting back through the fuselage.

"Get out, get out!" Blackie hollered at his copilot. Spain tried to climb
through the top escape hatch, but got stuck. Blackie, holding the burning
plane steady, stood up and pushed him through. Spain shot back along
the fuselage over the gun turret and between the stabilizers. He yanked
the release ring and his parachute opened. He floated down safely the
few hundred feet to earth. He was the only member of the crew to get
out alive.

News that the dashing Blackie had fallen victim to the Japs could not
help but have a deleterious effect on all the crews flying the area.

The Japanese were not only active in the air. They had patrols rang-
ing throughout the area, and many of the native tribes were under then:
influence. Shortly before I arrived to take over the division, a C-46 flying
north of Myitkjdna with a cargo of gasoline and ammunition exploded
when it was attacked by three Japanese fighters. Through some miracle,
the three-man crew managed to bail out successfully, though they landed
in an area covered by Japanese patrols. The copilot and crew chief were
aided by friendly natives and got out safely. The pilot met three Burmese
and gave them eight hundred rupees to aid hun to reach safety. They
took his money, then delivered him into the hands of the Japanese. The
pilot was beheaded.

We learned of the betrayal from a report made by a native agent of

The Hump / 81

the British Intelligence. It read: **niese Burmese, their sin was great.
I have executed."

Routing planes to the north to avoid Japanese-held territory provided
small comfort to the men flying them, Japs or no Japs, they knew that
their chances of surviving were slim if they had to bail out, whether over
the steammg, uncharted jungles of Burma or among the mountam crags.
The most dreaded was the impenetrable, mysterious jungle. In that area
of the world there were hundreds on hundreds of square miles of jungle
so thick that crew members coming down only 150 feet apart would
not be able to hear each other's cries. The rank growth simply absorbs
all sound. I read report on report of men who were able to make voice
contact with each other, then suddenly, for no apparent reason except
the jungle acoustics, lost it. If they got out of the jungle at all, it was
each man hacking his way alone, for hours, days, weeks.

One of the longest Hump walkouts I ever heard of was that of pilot
Charles G. Allison and his crew of three, who spent ninety-three days
walking out of the jungle. They were in splendid condition when they
came out, although, Allison observed, "This is a hell of a way to get
in shape."

Another crew, whose plane was blown far, far oflf course to the high
Himalayas to the north, would probably have been willing to settle for
a ninety-three-day walkout as they parachuted out of their disabled ship
over that barren area of mighty upheaval. Instead, they were found by
an English-speaking Buddhist monk who took them to "Shangri La,''
the forbidden holy city of Lhasa. They were told there that only five
other Americans had entered the city. The Tibetans lavished hospitality
upon them, and they spent several days in that strange place few out-
siders have ever seen.

Such happy endings were rare. Ignorance of actual conditions and the
horror of the unknown could make a dangerous experience a horrible
and tragic one. I remember one particularly gruesome tragedy which
bore this out. A young radio operator with the rank of sergeant bailed
out of a crippled C-46, along with the pilot and copilot, over the
Hukawng Valley. The pilot and copilot managed to walk out of the
jungle in seven days. Search parties went in to look for the sergeant.
Before fliey even found the boy's body, the sickening odor told the

82 / OVER THE HUMP

would-be rescuers their search was hopeless. At the scene, the rescuers
reconstructed what had happened.

He had come down safely through the trees, and had come to rest
sitting in his harness five feet off the ground with the parachute caught
in the trees above him. He shot his gun a couple of times, then, when
no answer was forthcoming, prepared to get down out of the parachute.
He loosened his chest trap and one leg strap, and either attempted to
slide out of the harness that way, or lost his balance and fell. At any
rate, he wound up hanging upside down, his left leg caught m the harness.
His head and hands were on the ground, and the voracious red ants of
the Burmese jungle began crawling on him and biting him. He frantically
brushed away the undergrowtii as far as he could reach. By this tune the
boy must have been in a panic. A vine-covered tree trunk was withm
easy reach. He could have climbed it with his hands and gotten himself
in position to extricate his leg, but he made no effort to do so. Instead,
he took out his automatic and began shooting at the strap which held his
foot. He shot it away to the point where only a quarter of an inch re-
mained, but he had only one shell left. The pain and horror of the ants
swarming over hun became too much to endure. The boy used his last
bullet on himself.

Much of the dread of the jungle stemmed from its strangeness. We
tend to fear the unknown. The native tribesmen of the region also were
largely unknown, and, as a consequence, feared out of proportion,
although, to be sure, there were some treacherous people in that part
of the world. There had been some mformation collected from the few
missionaries who had gone into the area before the war, but much of
our practical information about the jungle tribesmen came from Hump
fliers who had bailed out and encountered them. In the Indian hills on
either side of flie Assam Valley lived three primitive tribes, the Abors
and the Mishmis to the north, on the frontier, and the Nagas to the south.
The Abors were stocky and well-built, and both men and women wore
then: hair cropped with bangs like Moe of tiie Three Stooges. They wore
handwoven but clean jacket-type garments, and were reported to be
reasonably pleasant. The Mishmis, on the other hand, were sullen and
dirty-looking. Both men and women wore theu: hair long, done up in
an unbecoming knot on tiie top of their heads. Though hardly pleasant
companions, they were not supposed to be dangerous.

The Hump / 83

The Nagas were known to be head-hunters. Although we knew of
no case in which this barbaric custom was carried out on an American,
the ever-present possibility did not add to the joy of bailing out over the
Naga Hills. On occasion airmen downed in Naga territory were treated
well. We reciprocated by rewardmg Nagas who helped down airmen
with one or more of many of the items they prized the most: drugs,
salt, red blankets, or empty C-ration cans.

The jungles of Burma offered a greater variety of tribes, plus the
possibility of Japanese patrols. The closer the tribe lived to the Japanese
lines, the more prone were its members to betray airmen to the Japanese.
By instinct, if not by order, most downed airmen walked north, away
from Japanese territory. Even then there was danger of running into
tribes who were warlike enough on their own, without benefit of the
Japanese. And the area just over the first ridge from India was wild
and forbidding even if no natives were encountered. The mountains rise
sharply in cliffs thousands of feet high, and deep gorges with wild-flow-
ing rivers traverse the area.

Further into Burma, although the dense, rank jungles continued, the
Kachins proved to be more or less friendly. They classified the four
belligerents as American, yery good; British, good; Japanese, bad; and
Chinese, very bad.

In northeast Burma live the Lisus. The black Lisus were definitely
hostile, while the white Lisus were merely unfriendly. It was hot wise
to approach a Lisu village after dark, as at nightfall the villagers would
set out cocked crossbows, with poisoned arrows, at strategic points cover-
ing the trails leading to the village. Spring the trigger, a vine strung
across the path, and it was death — ^slow and painful and sure.

In the south of Burma lived the Shans, who were generally friendly,
but numbered a few who were not averse to betraying Americans, or
anyone else, for a price.

Once in China, the airmen would find nearly all natives friendly and
most helpful. However, in the wild country of northwest China, over
which our planes occasionally found themselves after violent storms,
lived the hermitlike, primitive Lolos. The word lolo means basket: These
people hang their dead in baskets from trees.

This report on the people of a vast region would have been much
more difficult to prepare when I first arrived on the Hump. Much of the

84 / OVER THE HUMP

information was gathered and collated after I assumed command. But
we did know, at the beginning and even at the end, that we were send-
ing Americans across difficult terrain, frequently swept by fierce and
unpredictable storms, and peopled both by an enemy who murdered
prisoners and by tribesmen of largely unknown characteristics.

All this added up to one question many a pilot asked himself when
he started out over the Hump: What are my chances of getting back
if I have to bail out? In the early days, the truthful answer would have
had to be: Poor. Althou^ there were good men, daring men assigned
to Search and Rescue in the first couple of years, men like Blackie's
Gang, and Lieutenant Colonel Don Flickenger and his parachuting
medics, at best the early Search and Rescue activities were strictly cow-
boy operations. There was no real direction from the top. On occasion,
a Search and Rescue airplane actually loaded for a rescue mission and,
waiting for clearance, would be called back, the rescue equipment un-
loaded, and the plane prepared for a cargo flight over tiie Hump. When
such activities became known — and you can bet they did become known
— ^tfae effect on the flight crews who might be dependent on that operation
could well make the difiference between a successful flight and an un-
successful one. When men are pushed to the limit of human endurance,
flying planes pushed to the limit of mechanical endurance, it doesn't take
much more to render them ineffective in a crisis.

Many of these men were sick in the first place — ^physically sick. The
flood plain of the Brahmaputra is the finest breeding ground in the world
for the malaria-carrying anopheles mosquito. Unfortxmately, just after
an ATC Malaria Control Unit began getting results in the spring of 1943,
a jurisdictional dispute developed, and the Theater Headquarters sent in
one corporal from the Services of Supply to take ov^ the work. For
some time aU malarial control efforts were stymied and, of course,
malaria increased.

Diarrhea and dysentery were also prevalent; sanitation was a mess.
And water! Here's a description of the water in use at a Chinese base,
as contamed in a sanitary rq[>ort:

The idea behind boiling water pumped from the Luliang river,
which is reputedly infected with the amoebic cists and possibly
every form of disease known to China, is basically sound; but this
water requires further conditioning. AU along this river and mainly

The Hump / 8 5

around the unbelievably filthy city of Luliang, Chinese natives con-
stantly use this water, before it reaches a point of departure for
this base, to relieve themselves and wash their lice-infected clothes.
The writer has personally seen dead bodies floating in this water at
a point above the original source of the base water supply. Such
raw water is pumped to open tanks located at several places on this
base and is carried in buckets by coolies to oil drums placed on
platforms adjacent to wash rooms. Most of these buckets and tanks
leak profusely and cause muddy pools of molded and gangrenous
water to stand near all final sources of bathing and cooking water
systems. Many, or most of the coolies transporting this water over
long distances by low-slung buckets, are ridden with markedly run-
ning nasal infections. They constanfly blow their noses without the
aid of handkerchiefs and spit large spots of coagulated and infected
sputum over their entnre route of travel with water.

Bathing water used by personnel of this base is dangerous to the
health of American soldiers. For several days after a rain, the water
that comes from the pipes is a rich red mud color that offers no
aid to cleanliness and when combined with soap appears to resist
emulsification and the soap soon segregates itself into small muddy
flakes.

Water used for sterilizing dishes in the various mess halls is, in
fact, a form of soup with a basic foreign element of well-cooked
feces and red mud. The undersigned personally would hesitate to
wash his feet in the same water in which we are forced to sterilize
our dishes.

Mountains and jungles, Japanese and head-hunters, storms and icing,
mosquitoes and filth — had no picnic ahead of me, that was sure. And
yet, when I reported in to General George after my first quick trip in
June, I was confident that we could fulfill the double mission of mcreas-
ing tonnage and decreasing accidents. I had an ace in the hole. I'd been
thinking of the littie stroll I'd taken at the advance base in Assam. After
seeing the conditions in which American airmen lived and the slothful
appearance and undisciplined attitude of the men themselves, I had a
pretty good idea wherein much of our problem lay. After that exhibi-
tion, I would almost expect the command to have a high disease rate.
It followed that whatever rotation policy was in effect, if any, would be
overly harsh and not fairly administered. Food would be miserable, both

86 / OVER THE HUMP

in basic quality and preparation. PX supplies would be short. There*d
be little recreation facilities, no entertainment, little provision made for
the men to see more of one of the world's most fascinating countries.

The blame for these conditions could by no means be laid at the door-
step of my immediate predecessors. Geography was against them all, for
one thing. On the world maps that hung on ofl&ce walls in the Pentagon,
and in the minds of the men who looked at them, the Hump was far and
away at the end of the supply line. The closest distance to the good old
U.S.A. was straight down. In many respects the entire command was
just plain forgotten. If I may jump ahead of my story a litde, I^ give
an illustration. On Thanksgiving Day, 1944, 1 was flying up to our most
advanced base, Dergoan, when I heard on the regular news broadcast
that the Armed Forces were providing turkey for all American troops
overseas that day.

I licked my lips and gpxmed at Dan Wheeler, my aide. "Hope they
leave some for us," I said, "I wouldn't mind a bit of that turkey myself."

"You and me both, sir," he said.

We put down at Dergoan just before chow time, and by the time we
finished up at Operations it was time to go and claim that turkey. We
hurried over to the mess hall. Strangely, however, it seemed we were
the only people in a rush. I saw no long line of GI's clattering their
mess kits, nor contented soldiers and pilots strolling away, rubbing full
stomachs and puffing on hoUday cigars. About the only thing I did notice
was a pervading odor of sauerkraut.

"Smell that sauerkraut?" I asked Wheeler. "I never heard of serving
sauerkraut with txirkey before."

"Neither did I," Wheeler said. "But I'm beginning to smell something
that goes with it — ^wienies!"

And sure enough, that's what we had for Thanksgivmg dinner — ^sauer-
kraut, wieners, and, on that blistering hot day, some tepid cocoa. Where
was the turkey? Where was all the rest of it? Ha. This was the Hump.
We were at the end of the line.

These problems brought forcefully to my mind the incidental responsi-
bilities a military leader gathers when he tries to do the job he was sent
out to do. He often finds he has to handle the incidentals first, before he
can even get on with the primary task. I thought how vastly different
it is in the civilian world.

The Hump / 87

Businessmen are not required to take care of their employees on a
twenty-four-hour basis. They do not face the tough living conditions, the
shortage of food, clothmg, PX articles, and the rest, which the pipeline
from the States had been supplying in only a trickle. Then the executive
of a civilian airline has no reason to concern himself with what his em-
ployees do between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m. the next day, so long as they stay
reasonably well out of trouble and scandal, and show up in satisfactory
condition to do a day's work. But a military commander is responsible
for his persoimel, and their activities and facilities, around the clock.
In the India-China Division our men were a long, long way from home.
Their wives and mothers were not available to put a hot meal on the
table for them, make up their beds, send their clothes to the laundry.
There were no restaurants, no movies, and at many bases, no towns.
Next to the combat soldier in the foxhole, these poor guys in their
thatched bashas were about as bad off as a man in service could get.

Any officer who has commanded troops, be they soldiers or airmen,
sailors or marines, knows that when his men are proud to be Americans,
proud to be a part of their service, proud to be themselves, he has his
problem more than licked. I was fortunate in that before taking com-
mand I had the opportunity to put my finger on this problem of morale.
And I knew what to do about it,

I arrived for duty in early August. It was a sweltering hot and humid
Calcutta day. Not one breath of breeze was blowing, and the driver of
my car showed me his prickly heat as though it were leprosy. I soon
found out that just about everybody came down with it during the moist,
torrid summer months. At headquarters, a sprawling complex of build-
ings in the outskirts of Calcutta known as Hastings Mill, a group of
gilum-faced officers in sweat-darkened shirts and trousers awaited me.
If they expected any radical change in flying rules for either better or
worse, they were disappointed. I had decided that, with one exception,
the rules pertaining to flying the Hump would stand until I had a good
chance to look at them. The exception was the dictum, "There is
no weather on the Hump.'' One of my flrst orders was to the effect that
weather was a factor which every Operations Officer would consider in
dispatching aurcraft.

At the first opportunity I got together with Hammie Heard, my
advance party, for a quiet, informal estimate of the situation.

88 / OVER THE HUMP

"Sir," he said, "I have never seen nor heard of people living— existing
— as they do here and out on the operating bases. This is grhn. Nothing
counts but the tonnage that goes over the Hump. Morale is at the shoe-
laces. Everyone wants to go home — ^getting out of here is all they think
about and talk about."

I looked at him a moment. "You've been here for some weeks now.
Where's a major trouble spot and what shall we do about it?"

"Right here at headquarters, sir," he said. "Headquarters used to be
located at New Delhi. It was much more pleasant up there, but it was
over a thousand miles from the Hump, and General Hardin wisely moved
here to be closer to the scene of operations. The only thing available was
this old jute mill. Living quarters for headquarters personnel are long, low
brick buildings with practically no windows, no ventilation. They're
sweltering hot. It's impossible to sleep. The men get up during the night
and soak their bedclothes m water, then lie down again between the wet
sheets. It's worth that trouble just to be cool for a few minutes."

"Is there any way we can open up some windows, enlarge what open-
ings there are?" I asked.

"Yes, sir," he said. "That would help a lot. But what would really
help would be some big fans and something to get rid of the bugs."

"All right," I said, "get gomg. Knock down walls, partitions — ^what-
ever's necessary to get some air in there. I'll have Temple requisition the
biggest fans available, and we'H get them on the Fireball Express imme-
diately—if I have to go directly to General George. And I brought five
hundred pounds of the first issue of that new drug, a bug eliminator called
DDT, over in my plane. Now tell me something, Hammie. You men-
tioned everybody else's morale — show's yours?'*

He grinned.

As I have detailed earlier, one of my first actions was to fly tiie Hump.
It was somethmg I had to do. We had made the flight from the same base
I had visited on my first trip to India. When I got a chance I shook off
any would-be escorts and strolled back to the same area of bmhas that
I had visited on my first trip. They were as bad as they had been before,
and the off duty men loungmg aroxmd in front of them were no better,

I walked down the street, stopping at each basha. "Hello," I'd say to
each group, "I'm General Tunner."

I received the same reception as on the previous visit. Some looked

The Hump / 89

up with an obvious "So what?" expression; only a few rose to their feet.
The worst-looking sad sack of them all, a shaggy specunen who seemed
to be in a kind of stupor, neither stood up nor looked up when I greeted
turn.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

Some of his early traming must have come back to him, because he
struggled to his feet. "Sir," he said, "I been here since the spring of
1942."

"Why haven't you been rotated?" I asked. "Do you like it h«:e?"
"No, I don't like it here, but I can't get anybody to listen to me."
"What do you want to do?" I asked.
"Sir," he said, "I want to go home."

"All right," I said, "you can go home. Go pack your bag and get
ready."

I went on to the next basha. When I finished there I looked back. The
man I had talked to was still standing there, scratching his head. I went
back to him. "What's the matter?" I asked. "Can't you get your bag
packed? Do you want me to help you with it?"

He just looked at me.

"Listen," I said, slowly and plamly, "there's an airplane leaving here
in 'thirty minutes for the States. I want you on that plane, understand?
You're going homer

And he did. Aside from humanitarian reasons, aside from morale,
from a strictly military standpoint it did no good to keep men like that
in the theater. It so happened he was a mechanic. Who would want to
fly over mountain peaks, dense jungles, and head-huntmg tribes in an
airplane he had been working on?

But more important, that one homeward-bound GI was a symbol of
a whole new command attitude. You can be sure that before long every-
body on the base had heard about the new general telling ol' what's-his-
name to pack his bag because there was a plane leaving for home in
thirty minutes. But though I admit to a certain amount of theatrics, this
was no mere gesture. I saw to it that a fair and dependable system of
rotation for everyone was put into effect. It was not an easy system to
work out, I discovered later; one policy had to cover different classifica-
tions of men with different qualifications. Punchy as that mechanic with
over two years m India had been, he still could hardly have been less

90 / OVER THE HUMP

effective in his assigned task than a pilot or copilot would have been m
even less time.

As a matter of fact, a fixed rotation policy for Hump pilots was in
effect when I took over. The requirement was simply that they fly 650
hours. Some were flying 165 hours per month, m order to get home in
four months — ^if they lived that long. From every standpoint this was far
too much flying time in one month. Shorfly after my arrival Colonel
E. D. Abbey, my staff surgeon, informed me:

'Increased flying hours for our crews on the Hump has resulted in a
critical situation. Fifty per cent of the arew members are bordering on
a frank operational fatigue. Several recent accidents are direcfly attrib-
utable to flying fatigue. It is impossible for flight surgeons to evaluate
every case, and some men continue to fly because of the urge to fly
their required time and return to the States."

As a result, at the same time that I was going through the entire divi-
sion with a fine-tooth comb, sending home men who had been too long
in the theater, I deliberately increased the amount of time the flying
officers would remain in the theater and increased their required num-
ber of hours to 750. Both conditions — a year and 750 hours flying time
— ^were required before a pilot could be rotated home. It didn't make
the pilots happy, but with no longer any need to average more tKan
65 hours per montii, I do think it kept quite a few of them alive.

Fair administration of the new rotation policy made Hump tonnage
look bad for a month or so; I had to send home so many key men that
tonnage decreased. But I counted on making it up, and more, through
the improved morale which would result from the proof that every man
was being treated fairly. And it turned out that I was right.

Even announcement of the new rotation policy couldn't compare with
the real bombshell I dropped next. I brought military disciplme, and all
it entailed, to the India-Chma Division. Those filthy bashas which had
never been cleaned— I ordered them cleaned and given a full-dress in-
spection, with an inspection to follow every day. The officers' barracks
would be inspected once a week.

And on Saturday, I ordered, each base would have a parade. I sup-
pose that many base commanders and their staffs read that one over a
couple of times, incredulously. There had never been, to my knowledge,
a United States Army parade on Saturday in either India or China since

The Hump / 91

the Hump operations had begun. I learned later that some of the base
commanders threatened not to have the parades, and that bitchmg was
rampant This did not phase me at all. I knew none of them would
carry out their threats, and as for the bitching, let them. It just so hap-
pened that I had served as a second lieutenant in the United States Army
An- Corps for seven long years, longer than the total time many of these
colonels and lieutenant colonels and majors had put in service. When it
came to bitching, with that background I'd take second place to no one
in the theater.

I went ahead with my full-scale program. The men stood inspection
and marched in parades and shaved their faces and cut their hair and
spruced up both their personal appearance and their living quarters.
Military courtesy was no longer just a phrase. Not long after I assumed
command, General Smith came over to see what was going on. I escorted
him around the division, with prior orders to every base commander to
have a parade in his honor. When he left for Washington, he told me,
with a wry grin, "It's about time I was leaving. All the time I was here
last year I didn't have to return a smgle salute. Now I'm lucky to get out
of here before my arm drops off."

As the weeks went by, the change that was taking place in both the
officers and men became apparent. Though quarters might be thatch-
roofed bashas, with dirt floors, they were now kept as clean as the
decent American homes from which these boys came. Though the first
parades may have been composed of slouching, self-conscious, and
diffident men, you could see, each Saturday, a little more stiffness in
that backbone, a little prouder tilt to head and shoulders, a more pur-
poseful swing in the arms. They were beginning to look like American
soldiers, and that was just exactly what I wanted. I had been sent to this
command to direct American soldiers, and while I was their commander,
by God, they were going to live like Americans and be proud they were
Americans.

I was by no means unaware that a positive result of this new-found
cleanliness, pride, and patriotism might well result in increased efficiency
and performance. I had been taught it at the military academy and had
learned it through personal experience as commander of the Ferrying
Division— bases that were well run, clean, orderly and soldierly did a
better operating job. Where the training schedules were strict and the

92 / OVER THE HUMP

supervision of messes and barracks firm, tbe personal attitude and the
morale of the troops was good and the results gratifying. And this was
true all over the world.

But this stem supervision is only a small proportion of the function
of command. It's not a one-way street. While the lower echelons work
for the mission of the commander, he must work for them. And there
were a hundred things to do.

I'd already seen to some of them. Certainly one of the services a
commander can perform for his men is to help them stay well. When
I took command, I found that although we were operating in areas
mfested by myriads of malarial mosquitoes, discipline was so lax that a
high percentage of the men were not even aware that their bases were
located in a malarial zone. The medical department had repeatedly
attempted to put in a theater-wide program of malarial control but hadn't
gotten very far. When I gave Colonel Ed Abbey, my chief medical
officer, free rein, he and his officers and men went to town. Probably
the most effective means of control of the anopheles mosquito was
furnished by the malaria spraying flight, more popularly known as the
"Skeeter Beaters." Operating out of stripped-down B-25 bombers, the
spraying ffight eliminated 90 per cent of the mosquitoes in the area.
Proper practice of malarial control by the individual men in the division
— ^use of repellents, mosquito nets, and Atabrine — combined with the
work of the Skeeter Beaters to drive down the prevalence of malaria to
the lowest rate of any military organization in the India and China
theaters of operation.

Our businesslike methods worked beautifully on the Hump, thanks in
great measure to the fine staff of industrious and intelligent officers I
was so fortunate to have. Temple Bowen proved to be all that I had
ever hoped for, and even more, as I was able to move him into the
deputy commander's slot almost immediately after moving to India. I
was constantiy on the go, visiting our bases in both India and across
the Hump and meeting with General Chennault and other officers in
China. On one occasion I made what was then the world's longest sched-
uled ffight, from India across thousands of miles of water, bending
around Japanese-held Sumatra and Java, to General MacArthur's head-
quarters at New Hollandia. Whenever I was away from headquarters,
it was a great relief to know that Temple was carrymg on for me. When

The Hump / 93

it came to accidents, he was particularly tens^ious. At the first report
of an accident Temple would immediately contact the commander of
the field at which the plane was based, by telephone if possible, and
demand an immediate explanation, complete and detailed.

The 8 A.M,, seven-day-a-week staflE meeting proved itself . The staff
officers enthusiastically put in what tune was necessary to get the job
done, whether or not it required more than their normal work day of
twelve hours, Monday through Sunday; I fiilled in the skeleton staff I
brought from the States with officers already m the division. Ck)lonel
Earl Hamm took Temple Bowen's place as Service and Supply officer
and did a thoughtful job.

A young captain named Eddie Hastings was aheady serving as Intel-
ligence Officer of the division. Eddie had been connected with Cook's
Tours in the Orient before the war, and had guided parties through both
India and China. He had more knowledge of India and China than any
other officer in the division. He was sophisticated and always impeccably
attired — ^you'd never catch Eddie with a speck of dust on his shoes. He
was always cheerful, the greeter type, and yet at the same time he was
thorough and efficient

I never knew exactiy how Eddie went about his mission, but I do
know that the intelligence he picked up concerning the enemy was al-
ways correct. And it was vital. The primary mission of the Japanese
air force in Burma was to hamper our work— bomb our fields, inter-
cept and harass our aircraft. In the late summer of 1944 Hastings
learned of the Japanese intention to throw an all-out effort against us,
beginning in October. At that tune I was just getting ready to inaugu-
rate C-54 ffights across the lower, more direct, southerly route. The
planes would cross over 150 miles of enemy-held territory and would
be well within the range of enemy fighters. On Hastings' advice I
urgently requested General Stratemeyer to provide adequate fighter
protection for our unarmed transport aircraft. The fighters were pro-
vided, and enemy action was of littie consequence.

Bob White did the superb job I expected of him. His mexhaustible
enthusiasm for production-line maintenance proved irresistible. Soon
every engmeering officer on every base was enthusiastically going about
putting in PLM. Bob went about the command exhorting, inspiring,
and checking, and I backed him completely. I constantiy inspected

94 / OVER THE HUMP

the maintenance operations, probably devoting more time to this activ-
ity than to any other. I was no expert, but I could recognize efficiency
and results, and both were there for me to see.

One of the bases at which White rubbed together with the engineering
officer and produced sparks of achievement was Tezgaon. The engi-
neering officer there was Major Jules Prevost, who went on to become
the engineering officer of the Military Air Transport Service.

With Bob's encouragement, Jules did a great job at Tezgaon. His
PLM soon had the forty C-54*s assigned to the base averaging out at
twelve hours flying tune a day. He was able to send the big planes
through this Ime in twenty-two hours. Tm looking at the blueprints of
his operation at this writmg, and they show a beautifully well-knit
operation. Here is the work schedule of each station:

Station No. 1:
Station No. 2:

Station No. 3:
Station No. 4:

Station No. 5:

Station No. 6:
Station No. 7:

Initial engine run-up; general inspection of airplane

and its forms; work planning.
Airplane wash and poUsh, inside and out; cowlings
removed, engines sprayed and cleaned; sumps
drained, etc.

Carburetion; communications; propellers and anti-
icer system.

Power plant, ignition system (removal of plugs),
lubricating system, power section, accessory section,
engine controls; oxygen system; painting of placards
and insignia; rigging and surface controls.
Instruments; automatic pilots; electrical system,
engine section, fuselage section, cockpit section;
hydraulic system, landing gear (including retrac-
tion); wheels and brakes, tires; de-icer system;
general lubrication.

Final inspection; replacement of operational equip-
ment.

Preffight, final run-up, servicing.

Tezgaon was also the proving ground for another mnovation. In
the early days of my command, I was constantly struck by the fact that
we were always requisitioning more personnel from the States, espe-

The Hump J 95

daily mechanics. Yet each base was set down m the midst of innumerable
native villages and towns teeming with men who seemed both idle and
hungry. Here was a great source of man power, completely untapped.
Tezgaon, in addition, was only a few miles from the large city of Dacca
in Bengal, now East Pakistan.

In production-line maintenance there are many uncomplicated jobs.
Why couldn't some of them be given to native labor? In this way we
could free our skilled personnel for more complicated tasks and at the
same time contribute to the livelihood of the local people. I asked Ike
Teague, my personnel officer, to get together with Bob White and look
into this area.

"An important part of production-line maintenance is cleaning and
washing the airplane," I told Ike. "It's an onerous task that requires a lot
of men. Here is at least one job in which we should be able to use native
labor."

Over the next few weeks Ike gave me several progress reports on the
native-labor project. He worked out an arrangement by which the British
paid the salaries of our Indian workers through reverse lend-lease. Native
labor was increasingfly utilized until, of some 225 men assigned to the
Tezgaon maintenance line, to take just one base, 85 were Indians.
Most were assigned to the washing rack, but others performed more
complicated tasks. One day Prevost reported proudly to White, and White
reported proudly to me, that he now had natives removing all the spark
plugs from the engines on routine inspections. The base at Sookerating
reported Indians assigned to the paint shop and doing well while selected
ones were workmg in engme build up, eagerly learning to strip, build up,
pre-oil, and pickle engines.

Natives were also brougiht in to other phases of the entke operation,
particularly in the housekeeping department. We eventually employed
fifty thousand Indians and Chinese on the Hximp, and with excellent
results. Many of the problems I had been warned against simply did not
materialize. I had been told to expect sabotage and treachery, but never,
not only on the Hump with Indians and Chinese, but in subsequent years
with Germans, Japanese, and South Koreans, did I experience one single
case of sabotage involving the native sons. I had also been warned that
the obviously poverty-stricken peasants of India and China would prove
to be of inferior intelligence. We quickly found out that their poverty

96 / OVER THE HUMP

was no indication whatever of inferior inteffigenoe. As for the problem
of communications, getting the idea across to the native people as to
what they should do and how they should do it, it was with us only
when no interpreters were available. In India, we hired English-speaking
baboos (foremen), and everything worked out well.

One problem we could never lick completely was petty pilferage. It
would take an Indian or a Chinese laborer but a second to slit a bag of
rice, flour, salt, or sugar and scoop out a handful. Frequently a good
portion of the contents of the bag would spill out in total waste as a
result of the theft of that one tiny portion. We brightened our comer of
the world, too, for natives living in the areas around the bases would
frequently tap onto our electric wures, using wire that had probably been
stolen in the first place to make the tap, to light up bulbs that were also
stolen. One enterprising Indian neighbor tapped onto a telephone wire
by mistake. The only time he could get even a faint 0ow on his stolen
bulb would be when somebody was cranking the magneto to ring up
somebody else on the line. It's a wonder he didn't come m and complain.

Our base at Barrackpore north of Calcutta was patrolled by one of
the most unique poUce forces in the Army An: Forces — a group of 259
Indians recruited from pension policemen, veteran soldiers, and retired
Indian army officers. They were divided into four companies, one com-
posed of Ghurkas, one of Sikhs, one of Pathans, and one of Hmdus,
each under the command of an American enlisted man. The American
noncoms conscientiously studied the religion, customs, and language
of the men in Jjieir companies, and could give them a verbal pat on the
back — or chew them out — ^in their own language. Petty thievery de-
creased noticeably after the Indians began patrolUng the beat.

When a few of the natives distinguished themselves, it was considered
both wise and fair to promote them to a position of leadership. But what
would their tide be? Someone suggested "chief constable," which had a
nice ring to it. Promotions were not accepted with the alacrity we had
anticipated, however. After some discussion the reason came out: They
didn't hke the title of chief constable. We then invited suggestions for
another title. Several were made and bandied about, and then came the
one that got unammous approval: assistant sub-inspector. To win pro-
motion to assistant sub-inspector they'd go through hell. Hie whole

The Hump / 97

business was typical of the people of India. They were solmn and
serious. The Chinese, by contrast, were happy-go-lucky individuals.

One native employed in India brought in some valuable publicity. We
were short of all kinds of equipment there at the end of the world.
Naturally, we kept up a steady barrage of requisitions, but too often
they were ignored. One of our prime needs was for more loading equip-
ment. One day I happened to drive by an Indian plantation and saw
several elephants at work in the fields.

"Hmmn," I said to Dan Wheeler, ^'I wonder if one of those elephants
could be trained to load a drum of gasoline on an airplane?"

"I don't see why not," Wheeler said.

I suggested to the commander of the Misamari base that he find an
elephant, complete with mahout, and have the beast put through a basic-
trainmg course in auplane loading. The elephant was found, and, inas-
much as she was a member of the faker sex, promptly named Miss Amari.
She quickly learned how to get her tusks under a drum of gasoline, hold
it in place with her snout, pick it up and roll it in the plane's cargo
door. I had photographs taken and given to the news agencies. Pictures
of Miss Amari ran in newspapers in America from coast to coast, and
for a while there we weren't so forgotten. You can bet that several official
photographs of Miss Amari at work got into the hands of General George,
with a respectful comment to the effect that if we had more pieces of
American-made equipment we wouldnH have to use Indian elephants.
The gasoline drums Miss Amari lifted were made right there in India, by
the way, as just another part of the operation.

Just prior to my arrival, a report had been made to the effect that
somediing ought to be done about the Search and Rescue Unit. At the
time, a few dedicated men were carrying on a cowboy operation under
the very general supervision of the wing commander at Chabua.
Though brave and hardworking, the members of the imit just didn't
have the authority to conduct operations in an efficient manner. The
matter got all the way to ATC headquarters in Washington, but there
it bogged down in administrative details. One of the first things I did
was to set up a series of consultations on this vital question with every
other Air Corps Command operating to any extent over these areas. We
came away with the agreement that one agency should be made respon-
sible for the centralized and consolidated operation of all Search and

98 / OVER THE HUMP

Rescue work, and that this one agency wovdd be the India-China Division.
Washington approved, and I assigned Gordon Rust, my division inteUi-
gence officer, to supervise the establishment of a thoroughgoing, efficient
Search and Rescue or^nization. He did. To handle the details he found
a crackerjack of a commanding afficw in Major Donald C. Pricer, who
had flown the Hump as a pilot for over a year before becoming Opera-
tions officer at the Mohanbari base. Pricer selected his own personnel, and
my headquarters approved their transfer to him. He started with a nucleus
of twelve officers and forty-four enlisted men, who went to work with
enthusiasm for the job. Within a month the strength was doubled, and I
assigned to the unit six aircraft, four B-25's, a C-47, and an L-5. These
planes, and all subsequent planes coming under the unit's command, were
painted Air-Corps-blue and orange-yellow so they could be easily spotted.

We now had an efficient, military Search and Rescue Unit dedicated to
its task on a steady, thoroughgomg basis. This entailed, for one thing,
the pin-pointing of every existing sign of wreckage beneath, and the
educating of all crews flying the Hump to report all signs of wreckage.
From then on, all new crashes could be systematically attended to with-
out wasting time on rechecking the old ones. IMs in itself eliminated
much duplication of work, for, after all, aluminum was scattered the
length and breadth of the route.

With the unit on a well-organized and functioning basis, it could now
undertake such complex op^tions as the rescue of Technical Sergeant
Marvm H. Jacobs. Jacobs had been doang peacefully in a C-46 en route
from Chabua to Karachi one night when, suddenly, he felt a jolt. The
next thing he knew he was lying on a steep hill, in the dead of night, with
a broken leg. In the morning a group of Dufla tribesmen, hearing his
cries, hacked thdr way tiurougji the bamboo thicket to him. They were
friendly and co-operative, but Jacobs was in too great pain to appreciate
them. For two days he refused to permit them to lift him.

Finally the little group of natives helped him over rough terrain to
the wreckage of the plane. Though only half a mile, the journey took a
fun day. In the plane's wreckage w«e the charred bodies of thirty-four
other persons. Despite the gruesome surroundings, Jacobs felt he had
more chance of being rescued if he stayed by the plane. One food kit was
found, and that was all he had to eat until, on the sixth day after the
cxash, he collapsed. The Duflas built a litter and carried him to a small

The Hump / 99

vfllage. Runners went out on the two-day journey to the tea estate, which
radioed the news. The first thmg next mornmg, two members of the
unit, Lieutenant William F. Diebold and Sergeant Brenner, parachuted
from a C-47 and found Jacobs alive but in bad condition. He was ema-
ciated, dehydrated, and running a fever. He had lost blood through
numerous cuts, and was in great pain from the fracture of both his lower
leg and foot, which had become infected. They radioed for a medical
officer, and Captain A, E. Lamberts parachuted and reached them just
fifteen minutes later. He gave Jacobs plasma, fluids, and food, in addition
to dressing his cuts and the infection, and for the first time in eight days
Jacobs began to feel less than miserable.

The tiny village was located in the wild country along the Tibetan
frontier. It would take weeks to get Jacobs out of there on a litter. No
helicopter was available, and so a light plane, an L-S, would have to be
employed. But the only spot anywhere near level in the entire area was
surrounded by huge trees. The prospective field itself was thick with
smaller trees and stumps. This called for a full-fledged engineering
operation.

The Search and Rescue Unit rounded up a number of picks-^o
shovels were available — ^and ten cases of dynamite. The three Americans
and a hundred men, women, and children of the Dufla tribe set to work
with a will. In seven days the big trees and the stumps had been blasted,
and the natives had leveled the runway by carrymg dirt in their hands.
The good news was radioed out, and soon a flying armada of six planes
appeared and circled the area, giving the natives a thrill. An L-5 came
down low to explore the best route to the field through the surroundmg
mountains. Finally it came in, flying around one mountain, up a valley,
over a saddle, and down for a bumpy but safe landing. Sergeant Jacobs
was loaded aboard, and as the onlookers, natives, and Americans alike
held then: breath, the pilot gave his little plane the gun and it jolted along
the runway. At the very end it finally took the air. The plane came back
next day and picked up Captain Lamberts, but further landings were
considered too dangerous. Lieutenant Diebold and Sergeant Brenner had
to hike out.

A solid, hard-working unit that any commander could be proud of,
Search and Rescue now increased its duties by producing a monthly
bulletin. It disseminated much valuable information concerning pro-

100 / OVER THE HUMP

cedures in jungle travel and hints for foiced-^wn crews and fighters.
It was obvious now that the Search and Rescue Unit was operating on
an eflBcient, businesslike basis. Surely this lessened some of the qualms
of the men flying the Hump.

In addition to the fully justifiable fear of all the known dangers of
the Hump, there was another, the fear of the unknown. Few Americans
had ever been close to a jungle before, and its dark mystery naturally
produced a sensation of dread. The only way I could see to dispel this
fear was to strip the jungle of its secrets. After weighing this problem
heavily with my staff, I ordered each base to establish a jungle indoctri-
nation camp, m which our men could see and explore the jun^e them-
selves, under the guidance of trained jungle scouts. The camps were
deliberately designed to provide an interesting respite from the rigors
of routine flying duties as well as jungle indoctrination. I had extended
the stay of pilots and flight crews in this country, and it was only fair
to give them a Httle variation from then: dangerous routine.

Most of the men found their stay at the camp primiarily a practical
and worthwhile education. Under the guidance of expert woodsmen our
pilot-vacationers were taken on expeditions into the wild country that
surrounded the camps. Hiking through the jungle brought the tramees
face to face, often for the first time, with the dense undergrowth and
perpetual shade. They saw the beauties of the tropical vegetation as well
as a few of the unpleasant features, such as the myriads of flies and
mosquitoes, the leeches, and other inhospitable denizens of the jungle.
They were shown which fruits and plants were edible, which were
poisonous. They learned the easiest way to travel through the jungle,
how to travel across country without getting lost, and how to use the
equipment in the jungle kit with which every plane was equipped. They
learned not to get panicty, to keep their heads.

Some camps were located near the mountains, with chilly mountain
streams making their way down narrow gorges, over rapids and water-
falls, from their sources in the snow-covered peaks of the high Himalayas.
Here our men learned to use the rubber life rafts every plane carried
as emergency equipment.

On trips to native villages our men could meet people generally similar
to those found in the areas in which they might bail out. By means of
signs and symbols they could learn how to converse with these natives,

The Hump / 101

and thereby acquire confidence in their ability to make thdr wante known
in case it should be a matter of life and death.

Many of the men were eager to go on the night hunting expeditions
we made possible for them. Not every American soldier in World War II
had the opportunity to e^erience nightfall in the jungle along with a
trained guide who could identify the mysterious sounds. Lying in
machans, woven platforms fastened securely to branches of trees, the
men could frequently see wild game pass close by — deer, elephants,
leopards, wild boars. Under these controlled conditions, you quickly
learned that you could share the jungle habitat with these creatures as
long as you did not molest them and kept out of their way. Dangerous?
Certainly, but only to the man who did not know what he was doing.

The primary purpose of the camps was excellently served. Many a
pilot told me p^sonaUy that bailing out into the jungje was no longer
as fearsome a prospect after a stay in the jungle-indoctrination camp.
For one thing, he knew he wouldn't starve, for there were wild chickens
and peafowl everywhere, and he'd learned how to bag them. To all it was
an interesting experience, and to many — ^those who deliberately chose
to go out and live in the jungle and from the jungle during tfaek entire
stay — ^it was fascinating.

For those men who didn't want to spend any more time in the jungle
than the course required, we provided all kinds of sports — ^volleyball,
horseshoes, badminton, tennis, Ping-pong, croquet, as well as swimming,
motorboating, and fishiug. If you didn't want to do anything at all but
lie around in a hammock and read, well, that was O.K. too. For the
real seekers of pleasure, we took over hotels in Bombay, Lucknow, and
Calcutta, where the pleasures were almost sybaritic — a far cry from the
basha living at our remote Assam and Bengal bases. India is a strange
and exotic country, a land of great beauty, but also a land of great
extremes. As long as our men were there, I considered it a command
function to make it possible for them to see some of the fascinating sights.

One of the larger camps, Gaya, had an additional mission. My flight
over the Hump, together with a study of accident reports, convinced me
that to fly the Himip without intensive preparation for it was at the
least foolhardy. I resolved that I would be the last to repeat such a stunt.
We set up a routine procedure in which the new pilot coming into the
theater would first take a short jungle-indoctrination course, then fly the

102 / OVER THE HUMP

Hump a few times as copilot, then undergo his final training for first
pilot.

The reason General George sent me to the India-China Division, how-
ever, was not to arrange for sight-seeing trips and training schools, but
to increase tonnage and cut down the high accident rate on the Hump.
Alarm had been increasing in Washington over the loss of Americans
in the China-Burma-India theater, ccHnplaints piling up in the offices
of senators and representatives.

From the very beginning, my staff and I had given major consideration
and attention to the Flying Safety Program, now greatly augmented and
encompassing all phases of the operation. To speak basically for a
moment, the primary purpose of the Flying Safety Program was to pre-
vent accidents. Accidents are predictable, therefore preventable. Thus
the mission of Flying Safety was to anticipate and promptly correct
conditions leading to events which would cause accidents.

Flying Safety came up at every staff meeting, and not only within
the narrow confines of the Operations Section, which controlled the
pilots and maintenance, but the other sections as well. Generally the
program sifted down to four main topics:

The investigation and analysis of existing flight procedures and prac-
tices and of maintenance procedures and practices.

The statistical investigation and analysis of accidents.

The sound recommendations for the correction of faults as revealed
by the foregoing.

Prompt action and follow-up on that action.

Much of what we worked out in that pioneering Flymg Safety Program
on the Hump has now become routine and is to some degree technical,
so I will not give here a formal paper on our program. But perhaps a
brief discussion will give some idea of its scope.

First, we learned to mvestigate fully and completely the training of
our pilots. We ran a careful and complete investigation on every pilot
to make sure that he had received adequate training, had been screened,
and that he was familiar with, and competent to handle, the particular
types of aircraft to which he would be assigned under all conditions
anticipated in the performance of his duties. I could list here scores of
individual flying operations with which we made sure every pilot was
familiar, such as proper procedure in take-off and landing in cross winds,

The Hump / 103

knowledge of the aircraft, its engines and its instruments, its limitations
and its loads. Nothing was taken for granted, and too often we were
proved right; not all pilots knew all they should have known. No matter
if the incoming pilot had been a competent first pilot in some other
division of the ATC, we made sure that he knew his job before he be-
came first pilot on the Hump.
Flying Safety comprised:

Weather — ^means of combating such conditions as icing and turbu-
lence, computing wind velocity in good weather and bad.

Communications— use of the radio compass, the radio limitations
with which we were forced to live, when to use the Air Force cry of
help, "May Day," and when not.

Pilot discipline and airport discipline were important. Example: The
check list, which must be in every plane and to which every pilot must
refer. It tells him the exact procedure he must follow from the tune prior
to starting the engine to that following his cutting it off at his destination.
We found planes without check lists, and pilots who didn't bother. Both
situations had to be corrected.

Briefing and debriefing proved to be of the greatest importance. Brief-
ing involved not only a thorough preparation of the pilot for the route
he was to take, but a check to make certain that the crew was competent
to make the proposed flight safely. Debriefing would show up incompe-
tent operational flight procedures, indicating the necessity for corrective
action and additional training. Debriefing also provided our best weather
reports.

Maintenance was a whole area in itself.

Airport facilities. This area may seem obvious, but auports do not
take care of themselves, as I discovered at Myitkyina. The report came
in that there were rocks on the runway of such size that they were blowing
our tires. I contacted General Godfrey of the Engineers, and in order
to prove to him the seriousness of the situation asked him to fly over
to Myitkyina with me. He agreed. It so happened that we proved the
point a little better than I had anticipated, for on landing we hit a small
boulder, and our own tire blew with a bang. The plane lurched, and we
were all shaken up a bit. Without any further prodding, General Godfrey
called out more native troops to work on the runway.

For an adequate check on health and morale, the flight surgeon saw

104 / OVER THE HUMP

each pUot personally before take-off. The pflots' diets had to be super-
vised. Eating gas-producing foods even hours before take-off would
result in debilitating agony at high altitude.

This highly condensed list may give an idea of some of our routine
checks and preventatives. When an accident occurred, every conceiv-
able factor was considered and investigated with thoroughness carried
to the extreme. We retraced not only the activities of the pflot, but those
of the lowest man in the maintenance crew as weU— and for a period of
two fun days before the accident. The men who did the actual main-
tenance work on the airplane were mterviewed exhaustively. We wanted
to know exactly what was done to the plane and why. We would inter-
view the supervisor who had made the final mspection of the mam-
■tenance work, and check the engineermg officer to make sure he had
confidence in the abihty of his inspectors, and the base commanders on
their confidence in thek engmeering officers. Sometimes we would have
a flurry of accidents among planes from one base, and it usually turned
out in such a case that an overzealous Operations Officer, trying to get
more tonnage, was pushmg the maintenance section to the degree that it
was tummg out sloppy work. As a result of each investigation, I wanted
sound recommendations, creative recommendations, beneficial recom-
mendations—recommendations which would correct discrepancies and
determine new procedures.

As an example of thoughtful and creative recommendations, let me
pass on some from Colonel Earl Hamm, our Service and Supply officer.

"We've got these guys out here ten thousand miles from home," Hamm
said one morning, "and just about the only possible chance the GI has
of gettmg just a few httle personal luxuries on a regular basis is through
the Post Exchange. He's lonely and blue, and if he goes to the PX and
finds he can't even get a Hershey bar, he's going to be loneUer and
bluer. I think that this is a definite factor in morale, and I'm gomg to
jack up the PX's all through the division."

He did a good job, too. One alert PX officer set up a small mobile
branch, stocked with such items as hamburgers, hot coffee, and candy
bars, and moved it right out on the Ime so that crews waiting for take-
off could avail themselves of it. Other bases quickly foUowed the example.

Hamm also took great interest m our transient service. K a candy
bar could help a man's morale, then certainly good food and comfortable

The Hump / 105

quarters for crews laying over would have a greater beneficial effect.
This was not just a matter of procuring supplies, but of creative recom-
mendations concerning what we already had. At every base quarters
for transients consisted of one big room. There wasn't much we could
do about that, but Hamm suggested that at least we could place Hie
men who came in early and had to go out early in one comer of the big
room away from those who had come in late and were going out late.
As the Hump was an around-the-clock operation, it was quite reasonable
for men who flew all night to sleep during the day. Quiet signs were
posted around the billeting area, and their message was enforced.

Hamm saw to it, with my encouragement, of course, that meals were
available at all hours. That meant dinner at 3 a.m., for men coming in
after a long flight, as well as at twelve noon. Facilities were maintained
around the clock to supply hot cofiee, juice, and sandwiches for in-
flight needs, and a short-order bar for crews making quick tum-arounds
or short stops.

This program had to be complete. Suppose, during monsoon season,
you took in a pilot, fed him excellent meals, gave him a comfortable
bed in a quiet comer— and then sent him out on a half-mile hike through
the driving rain to get to his plane? And so we bore down hard on the
motor pools to ensure that vehicles would be ready to take outgoing
crews to their planes and to meet incoming aircraft.

Some accidents were caused by birds. I remember one in which a
vulture came right through the windshield in clear weather at five
thousand feet; the copilot was killed. But most accidents due to bkds
occurred at the end of the runway, where, for some reason, large flocks
of what we called kites would congregate. We would regularly send out
detachments of men armed with shotguns to shoot all the bu:ds they
could and scare the rest away, but after a few days they would be back
again. This target practice became routine.

Most of our accidents were caused by human error. Soon it became
obvious that the young pilots were the most prone to accident. Pilots of
any age who had less than five hundred hours of flying time comprised
the next class of men you wouldn't choose to fly with, and mature men
with suflScient flying time, but inexperienced on the Hump, came next.
The safest pilot on the Hump would be a man in his thirties with two
thousand hours or more pilot time, including at least two hundred hours

106 / OVER THB HUMP

in Lidia or over tbe Roclq>iIe, and one who averaged more than thirty
hours per month.

We couldn't do much about the age of the pilots we were sent, but
we cotainly could do something about their experience. Men who came
to us widi little flaring ezpoience were assigned to the India Wing, to fly
around India exclusively. Most of the routes between pomts m India
were over relatively flat country, and there were places to land in case
of trouble. There was also comparatively less weather trouble in India
than on the Hump. In tiie dry season the conditions were just perfect,
and even m the monsoon season the mornings ware usually dear. We
were thus able to bufld up the newly arrived pilot's flying time under
comparatively trouble-free conditions. When he was ready for the Hump,
he would make several trips as a copilot before even becommg eUgible
to try for a first pitot's job.

One particular type of accident occurred nearly always on the China
side. Those who observed these accidents reported that the plane would
be coming in under seemingly perfect control and exceUent weather
conditions, make a good approach— and then continue that approach
right into the ground, killmg everyone on board.

What mysterious, occult reason was behind these mexplicable crashes?
We came to the conclusion that it was nothing exotic at all, just the
sunple lack of oxygen, or anoxia. Our standards today, twenty years
later, requke pilots to use o^gen m our jets at take-off. Over the Hump
we flew at a minimum altitude of seventeen diousand feet, frequently
at twenty-five thousand and over. It was imperative that our crews, cer-
tainly the pilot, wear an oxygen mask. But sometunes we'd be so un-
fortunate as to have one of those big, tough fellows, who sneered at
oxygen masks, piloting one of our planes. After crossing the Hump,
commg down abruptly from a twenty thousand-foot altitude, his vision
affected and mind beclouded by anoxia, he'd just fly right on into the
ground, cargo and everybody else with him. We tried to prevent this by
several methods, including discussions led by flight surgeons on anoxia
and its sneaky, killing ways. But it always seemed a Kttle frustratmg to
have to tell men over twenty-one years old that they needed oxygen.

More and more, as Stiles' statistical program poured out comprehen-
sive data, our picture of the operation was getting clearer and clearer.
At the be^nning, on the Hunq> statistical control as Stiles and I knew

The Hump / 107

it did not exist AU that mattered then was the strength of the command,
the number of planes, and the number of trips over the Hump in each
twenty-four-hour period. Now we required so much statistical informa-
tion, all of it important, that we sent statistical officers to each base to
make sure that we got it. One bright young second lieutenant reported
back that when he first arrived at the base to which he was assigned, the
station commander looked at his orders, looked at hun, and then said,
puzzled, "What's a statistical ofl&cer, and what in the hell do you do to
keep busy eight hours a day?"

Our hard-working young officers helped put in personnel- and traffic-
operating and maintenance-reporting controls which the old Ak Corps
personnel had never dreamed of, controls which enabled us to get a firm
grasp on the business of flymg the ffiers over the Hump. We were a big
business, and to run a big business successfully we had to know what
was going on. I wanted to know just exactly what every airplane on
every base was doing every minute of the day. How many planes were
flying, how many were in maintenance? How many were in loading
docks? And if in maintenance, what kind of maintenance— fifty-hour
inspection, one hundred-hour inspection, or engine change? What was
the crew ratio to aircraft in commission? How many men were D.N.I.F.
(duty not including flying)? Such classification was brought on by such
maladies as colds, ear infections, or tension; only the doctor could put
a man of D.N.I.F. Why a higher rate at one base than another?

On some days, when I first assumed command, less than half of the
ahplanes on a base were flyable. Why? It could be the fault of poor
scheduling, in which Operations might send too many planes in for
periodical check on the same day. But more likely the problem would
be one of supply. The engine parts needed to make the planes flyable
were not available. Sometimes, we found, necessary parts had been
stuck away and forgotten. More likely, however, the missmg part or
parts had never been requisitioned. It is remarkably easy, particularly
when morale is low and nobody gives a damn, to fail to requisition a vital
part. The supply clerk, with itching beard and sleepy head, might put
down the wrong number or the wrong nomenclature of the item needed.
The supply sergeant might let the requisition blank sit on his desk for
days. Supply officers, some xmloaded on the theater in the first place,
frequently were lax in keeping their men on the stick, as were engineering

108 / OVER THE HUMP

and maintenance officers. The whole maintenance complex included
crew chiefs, subline chiefs, and inspectors, each of whom could easily
muff his job if he didn't keep alert, if he wasn't proud of domg it right.
It wont right on up to the base commander.

For some problems I could take immediate action. To expedite im-
pOTtant suppHes, for example, I kept an officer at the mam depot m
Miami as my liaison man and trouble shooter. He saw to it that our
requisitions were given prompt treatment, and that whatever it was we
needed was put on the Fireball Express.

But the best cure for lack of supplies, for improper maintenance, for
all the other ailments that caused loss of life, loss of planes, and loss of
tonnage, was high morale. As I went from base to base, talking with
officers and enlisted men alike in every department, I felt I could see
the morale rismg. My men were Uving like American soldiers now; they
were shaving, keeping their quarters clean, and mardring in parade on
Saturdays. They were getting better food to eat, more PX suppUes, and
less mosquitoes. They were even getting entertainment. Not the big
troupes of headline stars flown to other theaters of operation, but home-
grown talent, in many cases comprising little better than an amateur
hour, but entertamment none the less. Fortunately, in our command,
we had one great star. Sergeant Tony Martin, the singer. He was a
godsend. I gave Tony his head, and he put together traveling troupes
from talented personnel aheady in tiie tiieater but performing other
tasks. We sent these troupes all over the conunand, putting on shows
for our lonely, homesick GI's. Anoflier great professional was tiie youth-
ful but highly talented concert pianist Leonardo Pennario, then eighteen
years (dd There was some problem in locating a piano, having it timed
to Pennario's demanding ear and then shipping it around tiie circuit,
but Tony managed it

Once a morale pattern is estabhshed and men become sharper, more
alCTt, ideas come along readily. Two obvious shortages in the entire
theater were fresh foods and recreation in off-duty hours. Put the two
together, howevor, and they solve theniselv«s--^d^! Within a few
montiis after flie suggestion was first made, tiiere was a total of sevraity-
five acres under cultivation around tiie various bases. Americans like
to dp tilings big, and bulldozers, tiractors, and jeeps were pressed into
service in clearing large areas. So were native Indians and oxen. I appointed

The Hump J 109

one of iny officers agricultural advisor, and each base was authorized
an agricultural officer (in addition to his other duties), and a full-time
noncom as working manager. The home-gardening program at Sookerat-
ing proudly reported after a few months of operation that its yield totaled
822 pounds of radishes, 700 pounds of cucumbers, 1440 pounds of
green beans, and 20 pounds of sweet com. The com was just coming
in at that time; stalks were nine feet high and still growing.

Many of our men, GI's and officers alike, had been torn from their
schooling by the war and preferred digging in books to digging in the
good earth. Fortunately, we also had many men on hand who had been
professors in civilian life. We were able to set up courses of study at
several of the bases. Our five institutions of higher learning, known as
Chabua, Assam, Basha, and Bamboo Universities, and Teke Hai College,
soon had a combined enrollment of several thousand students.

It may seem paradoxical, but as the extracurricular activities in-
creased, so did the work production. There was no question about it:
The aircraft were in a much better maintenance condition now than
before. You could see it with the naked eye, both on the shining surface
of the planes and on the daily reports from the statisticians.

Frequently, when I'd visit one base, both officers and men would ask
me how they were doing in relationship to some other base, or the entire
command. When I could say, "This base is leading all the others," they'd
look proudly at each other, sometimes even let out a whoop. But when
I had to report that Kurmitola, say, or Chabua, was way out in front,
they'd grimly assure me that it wouldn't be for long.

If only I could harness this sense of competition, I thought, make it
work for the entire operation. I have found over the years that Amer-
ican soldiers and airmen thrive on competition. Of course, in war, the
enemy usually provides more than enough, but there on the Hump,
although occasionally a Jap plane might cause us a littie embarrassment,
the overwhelming majority of us never saw a Japanese soldier, rarely
even a Japanese plane. The enemy was remote; we did not have the
sound of artillery or small-^ms fire to keep us reminded of war. Few
men could see the results of their work, for the very purpose was to get
it to China. Under such conditions it was human to relax occasionally.
But if the Japanese would not co-operate with us in offering a littie
competition, I thought, then it was necessary for us to furnish our own.

110 / OVER THE HUMP

We'd get the bases competing against each other. But how? The answer
was obvious. We'd publish a daily bulletin listing the full accomplish-
ments of each base in the period just ended. I knew my GI's; they'd do
the rest

It was first necessary to establish a fair quota for each base on both
a daily and monthly basis, taking into consideration the handicaps and
advantages of each. First we had to consider the number and kinds of
airplanes on each base. We operated several different airplanes — C-46,
C-47, C-54, C-87, C-109, and at times even B-24's— and each of these
planes had different capacities for cargo and different flight character-
istics. Some were easy to maintain, some difficult. Some had a backlog
of parts available in the depots and on the base, while for others parts
had to be flown in from Miami, half a world away.

We also had to consider the distance of the base from its usual C3ima
destination. Eventually we had a total of thurteen bases m India and six
bases in China working the Hump, and the round-trip distance varied
as much as fifteen hundred miles between the nearest and the farthest.

Overall, the daily quota for each base was as fair as we could make it,
and was, of course, subject to change as conditions changed. It was like
handicapping horse races. With a quota established for each base, I now
had to get the news of how each base was doing out to all the other
bases. I turned this project over to Gordon Rust, and he did the excel-
lent job I expected of him. The daily bulletin became more than that;
it grew into a newspaper. But still the most vital news to each man in
the Hump operation was how his base was doing in relationship to the
others. This healthy competition was a topic of conversation on every
base. Wagers were made, sometimes between whole units, and large
sums changed hands. The tonnage figures began to rise, steadily, steadily,
hour by hour, day by day, month by month.

I was fully aware, as I increased military discipline, cleanlmess and
courtesy, and ordered parades and inspections on Saturdays, that I
might be jeopardizing any chance of winning a popularity contest. This
did not bother me a bit; I was not there to be a good fellow, but to get
results. I had akeady become known as a cold, hard driver, with the
nickname "WiUie the Whip" whispered behind my back, and I didn't
lose any sleep over it. The men on the Hump were just like everybody
else. They tended to forget the positive benefits, like better food, living

The Hump / 111

conditions, entertdnment, recreation, and the very fact that they now
had a better chance to live in good health and enjoy all the rest; but
they remembered the annoyances and groused about them.

I was completely unprepared, therefore, for the letter I received the
day after Christmas, 1944, after I had been on the job less than four
months. I will reprint it here in its entirety. Army phraseology and all,
so that you can imagine the emotions which poured through me as I
read it.

Dear General Tunner:

Since Lieutenant Colonel Homer Kellums is returning to head-
quarters today and has kindly offered to carry a personal message
to you, I'm taking this opportunity to send a copy of Misamari's
broken records as of the 24th of December, 1944. I trust you will
find the records interesting. The idea of trying to break our own
record on trips over the Hump as a Christmas present to you came
about three o'clock on the afternoon of the 23rd. It was briefly dis-
cussed and the decision to make the effort was made. I wish you
could have been here to witness the result. There was no pressure;
no forcing of men to do the job. Every effort was voluntary, like
spontaneous combustion followed by wildly sweeping prau:ie fires.
Enthusiasm concerning the project burst forth in every section of
th6 field. A goal of 55 trips was set and the numerals painted on a
banner. That the numerals would have to be changed to higher ones
four times during the 24-hour period none of us even dreamed.
Colonel Kellums, who knew nothing of the effort until six p.m. at
the supper table, early the following morning set the score when,
after keeping constant tally on each and every trip, both in and out
until 4 A.M., prophesied that 81 trips would be the total reached.
The 81st trip left the runway one minute before the deadline.

Since the records speak for themselves, General, there is no rea-
son for me to write a lengthy explanation of how the feat was
accomplished. But I do wish to say, sir, that because of your stated
appreciation of the work done at this field and because of our affec-
tion and regard for you, we did it as a Christmas present for our
commanding general. We hope it is only a forerunner of accom-
plishments to be attained in the future.

My sincerest personal regards,

James A. Dearbein,
Major

112 / OVER THE HUMP

The letter was a bolt from the blue* It indicated what I had always
believed, that if the boss did the best he could for his men, that if he
convinced each individual of his own importance to the over-all mission,
that if he had confidence in his men and they had confidence in him,
then together they could accomplish nuracles.

And here was the proof. Eighty-one trips in one twenty-four-hour
period, although the normal number was thirty for that base. I thought
of the tired pilots going out again over the Hump at night, of all the
other officers and men working long and hard to give me this Christmas
present, and I don't mind admitting that Willie the Whip's eyes were
smarting a little.

About this time General Smith made a one-month inspection of flie
division; this was the occasion of his good-natured beef about saluting
his arm off. At the completion of the inspection, on January 28, 1945,
he wired General George as follows:

AM LEAVING THE INDU CHINA DIVISION WITH THE ASSURANCE
AND BELIEF THAT THE OPERATIONS OF THIS DIVISION WILL GO FOR-
WARD ON A BASIS WHICH WILL REFLECT CREDIT ON THE ATC AND
THE ARMY AIR FORCES. IMPROVEMENT DURING THE PAST YEAR HAS
BEEN SUBSTANTIAL AND IS CONTINUING, MEASURES HAVE BEEN, ARE
BEING AND WILL BE TAKEN WHICH WILL CONTIUBUTE TO IN-
CREASED SAFETY OF OPERATION AND AT THE SAME TIME PERMIT
THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE MISSION OF THE DIVISION. I HAVE
MET WITH THEATER COMMANDERS, AND AIR FORCE COMMANDERS
IN BOTH INDIA AND CHINA AND I AM ASSURED THAT THE ORGANIZA-
TION OF AIR TRANSPORT COMMAND IN BOTH INDIA AND CHINA HAS
THEIR RESPECT, GRATITUDE AND COOPERATION. IN NO SECTION OF
OUR WORLD WmE OPERATION THAT I HAVE VISrTED IS THE RELA-
TIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ATC AND THE LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS
SERVED ON A BETTER BASIS. THE COMMANDING GENERAL ICD, HIS
STAFF AND ALL MEMBERS OF HIS ORGANIZATION SHOULD HAVE
YOUR COMMENDATION FOR THEIR GOOD WORK AND ACCOMPLISH-
MENTS ON BEHALF OF YOUR ORGANIZATION AND OF ARMY AIR
FORCES.

In my first few months on the Hump my emphasis on morale and
safety imquestionably affected the total tonnage. In August, 1944, the
month I took over, we airlifted over twenty-three thousand tons to China,

The Hump / 113

but to Tom Hardin, my predecessor, however, must go much of the
credit for this tonnage. In September, my first full month of operation,
the tonnage went down to 22,000, but there was a good reason for this
reduction. I had promised a fair rotation policy, and I stuck by it. Some
men, technicians performing vital jobs for whom no replacements were
readily available, had been kept on in the division long after their time
had run out. I sent those people home, replacements or no replacements,
and there's no question but that this slowed our operations to some
degree.

Another factor in the decrease was the weather, or, rather, my reac-
tion to it. By this time I had become convmced weather on the Hump
was a major accident factor. There was weather on the Hump, and we
had to face the fact. I knew that our mission was to fly tonnage to China
to prosecute the war as vigorously as possible and that therefore we had
to fly under tough conditions. We did so; no airline today would permit
flight under the conditions we worked under— poor communications,
practically no radio beacons, planes loaded to the maximum, usually bad
weather over one end of the route or the other and sometunes both, icing,
extremely higih mountains with little chance of clearance if an engine
conked out, and, of course, the inhospitable terrain below, with its sprin-
kling of hostile tribes and Japanese. I knew that I had to send men out to
fly under these conditions, and that frequently I would have to fly the
route myself. But I did not believe that it was my duty to send men out
mto conditions known to be far more dangerous than usual. Thus, when a
pilot flew mto a particularly severe storm, found his plane bemg buffeted
around and icing up to the extent that he just might not make it, that
man had my orders to turn around and come back. Further, we'd hold
up all flights for a while in hopes the storm would abate. It is true that
some flints, many flights, were delayed by this poli<7. But fewer pilots
flew themselves and their planes into mountains.

In October we more than made up for the September slump, with a
tonnage of twenty-five thousand. November represented by far the great-
est increase on the Hump since its inception, with thirty-five thousand.
December dropped some three thousand tons, but January showed an-
other striking increase. And so it went.

Although we were making substantial gains in holding down the rate
of accidents, the over-all number of accidents increased as the number

114 / OVER THE HUMP

of flights increased. As I mentioned before, in January, 1944, the Hump
operation had shown a rate of two accidents per one thousand flying
hours. In January, 1945, the rate was .301, an unprovement of 700 per
cent. Yet that month we had twenty-three major accidents, in February
thirty-eight, in March forty-six. We lost a total of 134 crew members
m the first three months of '45.

Agam pressure poured in from General George. I was told that, while
the improvement m the accident rate was most commendable, there
must be a substantial reduction in number of accidents per week and per
month no matter how much tonnage was transported, no matter how
many hours were flown.

On the other side of the Hump, Lieutenant General Albert C. Wede-
meyer, Theater Commander in China, who saw litfle of the accidents but
felt the increasmg intensity of the Japanese effort to break into western
China, cried out for more and more tonnage. Lieutenant General George
E. Stratemeyer, commander of the Allied Air Forces in India and Burma,
had been informed that as soon as monthly tonnage on the Hump in-
creased to the point that it could support the extra men and planes in
China, he was to move to China with his staff and the Tenth Air Force
(then based in India) to command both the Tenth Air Force and the
Fourteenth Air Force and to increase pressure on the Japanese army
and their coastal shipping. He was naturally eager for Hump tonnage
to increase in order to carry out this mission. He sent a wire to General
George, with a copy to me, saying, in part:

I AM THOROUGHLY SYMPATHETIC WITH YOUR DESIRE TO ACHIEVE
THE FINEST SAFETY RECORD POSSIBLE ON YOUR HUMP OPERATION.
HOWEVER I FEEL THAT YOU HAVE GIVEN FLYING SAFETY FIRST
PRIORITY OVER TONNAGE PRODUCTION. PARTICULARLY RESTRICTIVE
HAS BEEN YOUR INSISTENCE THAT THE NUMBER OF ACCIDENTS BE
REDUCED EVEN AT THE EXPENSE OF ESSENTIAL TONNAGE*

I RECOMMEND THAT YOU REMOVE THE STRESS ON THE NUMBER
OF ACCIDENTS USING INSTEAD AS A MEASURING STICK ACCIDENTS
PER THOUSAND HOURS ON A TON MILE OR FLYING HOUR OR A COM-
BAT BASIS.

SECURE FROM THE STATES MORE EXPERIENCED CREWS.
PERMIT AN INCREASE IN TAKE OFF WEIGHT (mCREASB THE
LOAD) IN C-54 AIRCRAFT.

The Hump / 115
Later, Stratemeyer again wrote to General George:

AS YOU WELL KNOW YOUR HUMP OPERATION IN THIS THEATER
IS THE LIFELINE TO CHINA AND IS THE MEDIA BY WHICH AN ENTIRE
U.S. THEATER IS SUPPORTED. I UNDERSTAND THAT HUMP ROUTE
CONSTITUTES A SUBSTANTIAL PERCENTAGE OF YOUR FOREIGN AIR
TRAFFIC. I AM CONVINCED THAT IN YEARS TO COME YOUR COM-
MAND WILL RECEIVE AN EXALTED PLACE IN THE HISTORY OF THIS
WAR. THE HUMP IS THE MOST EXACTING AND DIFFICULT AIR ROUTE
IN THE WORLD. THE AVERAGE PILOT WILL ADMIT THAT HE WOULD
RATHER FLY COMBAT MISSIONS DEEP INTO JAPANESE TERRITORY
THAN FLY A HEAVILY LOADED TRANSPORT AIRPLANE OVER THE
HUMP. WE HERE HAVE ALWAYS CONSIDERED THE HUMP OPERATION
A COMBAT JOB. IT IS URGENTLY RECOMMENDED THAT YOU VIEW
YOUR HUMP OPERATION AS SEPARATE AND DISTINCT FROM OTHER
FOREIGN AIRLINE ACTIVITIES. TUNNER HAS CUT ONE MONTH'S FORE-
CAST FROM 48,000 TONS TO 42,000 TONS BECAUSE OF ACCIDENT
PREVENTION PRESSURES. THIS FORECAST REDUCTION IS VIEWED
SERIOUSLY. I SINCERELY BELIEVE THAT THIS TONNAGE REDUCTION IS
DUE TO YOUR EXTREME ACCroENT PREVENTION POLICY. ACTUALLY
TODAY THE RATE IS ONE ACCIDENT PER 2000 HUMP FLYING HOURS
WHICH IS SURELY LOW IN COMPARISON WITH COMBAT OPERATIONS
OF HEAVILY LOADED BOMBERS. GENERAL IRA EAKER IS WITH ME
AND HE AGREES THAT THIS OPERATION CANNOT BE COMPARED WITH
ANY OTHER AIRLINE OPERATION IN THE WORLD AND SUGGESTS THAT
YOU GIVE MORE LATITUDE. TUNNER THEN WILL HAVE MORE LATI-
TUDE IN CONDUCTING HIS HUMP OPERATION TO THE END THAT
GREATER THEATER TONNAGE CAN BE DELIVERED. IF YOU ARE SHORT
OF PILOTS EAKER AND I BELIEVE THAT MANY SEASONED BOMBER
PILOTS FROM EUROPE WOULD BE GLAD TO GET THE CHANCE TO FLY
TRANSPORTS WITH AN EYE TOWARD COMMERCIAL FUTURE.

I would have been most willing to have bomber pilots, or any pilots,
as the command was acutely short of experienced fliers. But I could not
go along with the argument that the entire accident policy should be
modified to permit the accident rate to conform with the combat rate.
We were flying in January three times as much as in the previous Jan-
uary, and our rates were materially better. I was by no means convinced
that relaxing safety procedures and pilot standards would mean an in-

116 / OVER THE HUMP

crease in Hump tonnage in the first place. Every plane and every crew
which flew the Hmnp and returned safdy meant that the same ship and
the same crew could carry another load to China, and another and
another and another. With steady unprovement in every phase of the
Hump's operation, I knew that we would soon satisfy both General
George's demands for a rock-bottom accident rate and the theater de-
mands for constantly increasing tonnage over the Hump. And this we
did do. The tonnage went up, the accidents went down. The last big
month, July of 1945, showed a total tonnage of 71,042, with our lowest
accident rate on record — .239 per thousand hours of flying.

Another bitter controversy involved Major General Qaire L. Chen-
nault, commander of the United States Fourteenth Air Force m China.
My running battle with General Chennault was certainly not of my own
choosing, for I had admired and respected him for years. I first en-
countered him as a student flier at Brooks Field in San Antonio. It was
Major Chennault who determined whether we students would go on to
the advance flying school at Kelly Field--or go back to the infantry. He
had a reputation of being mighty tough, and we all dreaded the check
flight with him. In my case, I had the usual trepidation, but once the
flight had actually begun I found it both pleasant and rewardmg. Chen-
nault was a great pilot; he knew how planes should be flown. He spared
no words if there was a mistake, but he was firm and faur.

There was no question but that General Chennault served nobly and
valiantly during the war, particularly in the early, most critical years.
He and his Flying Tigers, always outnumbered, still managed to delay
and severely punish the advancing Japanese forces. He earned the close
friendship of both the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang.

Our argument grew out of the operations of the Ak Transport Com-
mand and its India-China Division within Chiaa. General Chennault did
not want the ATC to operate in his command other than to aurlift sup-
plies into China, unload, then turn around and go home. He wanted to
handle all military air movement in his command, with his troop carriers
serving as logistic airplanes. I felt that air transport in China was a job
for the India-China Division of the Ah* Transport Command. It was
not, despite accusations made to that effect, a question of ambition and
empire-buildmg, but of common sense in ak transportation. We never
lost track of the fact that the primary mission of my division was to fly
critically needed supplies and people across the Hump into China. But

The Hump / 117

the ICD had picked up other jobs too over the years. We now ran a
regularly scheduled airline connecting all the American military bases
within India. We were charged with the duty of returning sick and
wounded American soldiers to the base hospitals in India, or to Karachi
for evacuation to the United States. To our mission of airlifting supplies
to China had also been added the job of brmging back on our return
flights such strategic war materials as tin and antimony, which were m
short supply in the United States, as well as, believe it or not, pig bristles
and duck feathers.

Of all our extracurricular duties, the most important was our opera-
tion of an aurline within China. Simply dumping the cargo at the Chfaxese
bases was, I felt, doing only half the job, for everything still had to be
redistributed to the using agencies. Some supplies went to the Liuchow-
Kweilin area, five hundred miles east of Kunming, some went as far as
Sian on the Yellow River, eight hundred miles to the north of Kunming.
All this had to be moved by air; vehicular trafl&c was out of the question.
Chinese roads outside of cities and towns were about in the same condi-
tion as American roads at the turn of the century. As for Chinese vehi-
cles, they were m terrible shape. They were held together with baling
wire. For fuel they used alcohol made from rice, and rice was scarce.
That these trucks operated at all was a mystery to Americans. I remem-
ber seeing GFs with their chins down on their chests in amazement as
they watched a typical Chinese truck repair job. There would be the
truck at the side of the road with three or four Chinese calmly grinding
valves or making whatever other repairs might be necessary, while their
rice cooked over a charcoal fire and their straw mats awaited them under
the truck. They might work there on the roadside for days. They usually
got the truck going agam, but this sort of thing harcUy made for an effi-
cient transportation system.

Thus the redistribution of supplies from the bases was a job for air
transport, and specifically, in my book, for the Aur Transport Command.
It so happened that we were doing most of it anyway, but spasmodically,
without direct control, and at a tremendous cost to Hump tonnage. For
frequently aircraft which had flown the Hump and set down at bases in
China would be requisitioned by authority of Wedemeyer or Chennault,
without ixrevious warning, and the orews ordered to fly them on to what-
ever emergency mig^t exist farther forward. Sometimes these planes
would continue on with the same car^, sometimes they would be un-

118 / OVER THE HUMP

loaded and different cargo placed on board. They might go to the east
or north. But whatever they carried and wherever they went, both planes
and crews would be completely out from under the authority of their
home base. This raised absolute hell with scheduling.

Our operating policy was that each plane must be flying, be under-
going maintenance, or be in the process of loading or unloading every
second of every day. Any condition other than those three had to be
answerable by the base commander. Charts and graphs were kept at
each base to show the status of every plane, every hour. We did not fly
schedules on the Hump; rather, each plane proceeded automatically and
immediately from each function to the next. When its time came for
maintenance, it went to the shop, and when it was ready for flight, it was
loaded and then took off. That went on day and night. This is how you
build up tonnage, by the constant utilization of equipment

Crews, also, must be utilized ejBBiciently, but with a difference. Crews
must rest. If they do not get adequate rest at the proper intervals, they
have accidents.

It was the job of our Operations officers at our bases in India and
China to schedule both airplanes and crews in an efficient manner m
order to get the maximum from each. We were constantly hammermg
at them in an effort to achieve the very optimum of utilization of equip-
ment, dovetailing the requirements of the metal monsters with those of
the flesh-and-blood crews who flew them. This was the sole function
of skilled technicians. And so, when our planes were requisitioned by
General Chennault in order to make local deliveries in China, the whole
schedule went to pieces. A plane due for one hundred-hour inspection
might wind up at some outlandish place in China, where there was
neither inspector, mechanic, nor equipment. Planes went out of commis-
sion at out-of-the-way fields where there were neither spare parts nor
mechanics. Maintenance men then had to be flown in from bases hun-
dreds of miles away, completely disruptmg the work of the base from
which they came. The crew, in the meantime, would be sitting around!
doing nothing, unless a plane was dispatched to pick them up.

On the other hand it might happen that the crews' normal flight tune
would terminate at one of these advance bases, and as a result the men
would rest or sleep while the plane simply sat there, doing nothing and
having nothing done to it. There is nothing more frustrating in air

The Hump / 119

transport than to know a plane is idle, and to be unable to do anything
about it.

We in air transport knew very well that these supplies had to be for-
warded from our own bases in China to the ultimate user. We were
more than willing to do the job, but it had to be done our way — eflBi-
ciently. With people stepping in and grabbmg our crews and planes
regardless of schedule, not only was the local delivery job being done
inefficiently, but it was disrupting the enture Hiunp operation.

And that, after all, was our primary mission. We were in an hour-
by-hour, day-by-day fight for time. When fifty akcraft at one time were
immobilized, with their crews asleep in China and maintenance men and
parts a thousand miles away in India, there was a corresponding decrease
in the Hump tonnage. The commitments made to Chiang Kai-shek by
President Roosevelt, General Arnold, and General George could not be
made under such conditions, and of course the blame for it came right
back on me. I was not answerable to the people who took my planes
away, but to Washington. And Washington wanted that tonnage.

The answer to the problem was perfectly simple. The situation merely
called for the establishment and operation m China of a fleet of C-46's
and C-47's with crews to fly them, with maintenance men and supplies
to keep them in shape, and with operations officers to schedule the
enture job efficiently. When it was necessary to move cargo around in
China, these aircraft would be available for the job. K it happened that
there was not enough work for all of them to do in China at any partic-
ular time, the extras would be assigned to fly back across the Hump, pick
up a load, and return, just as the India-based planes were domg. In this
way, the day-by-day rhythm of the Hump would not be disturbed, and
we could meet our commitments. Indeed, this plan was the only one
which made any sense at all.

But when I proposed it, General Chennault screamed bloody murder.
You would have thought I was reaching into his command and taking
his planes away from him, instead of merely operating my own. He
agreed that there was a need for more an: transportation in China proper,
but he maintained that if it were available, it should belong to him. He
gave many reasons for his position. He contended that the Ak Transport
Command could not operate as efficiently as he could in China, that the
ATC needed more personnel to do the same job that he could do with

120 / OVER THE HUMP

less, that our accident rates were higher, and that the daily utilization
of ATC aircraft was less than that of his own. He put this in black and
white in communications both to General Wedemeyer and General
Stratemeyer.

I doubt seriously if the Fourteenth Air Force had a statistical oflficer
at all; I not only had one, but his name was Kenneth Stiles. Thanks to
his superior statistical program, I could prove my figures. The utilization
per month for ATC aircraft in China was 212 hours, as opposed to the
148 for the troop carriers which the Fourteenth operated. The washout
rate of ICD aircraft was less than one half of the Fourteenth's troop
carrier rate. Further, we were operating with one half of our authorized
strength in China and consequently were in no way out of proportion
in personnel strength. Tactical units were not then nor are they today
the ones who should handle air transport. Hie mission needed the full-
time thmking of a commander and a good staff of specialists. It could
not safely be an add-on mission to tactical air.

The Japanese helped bring the matter to a head. They launched then:
long-expected push to Kweilin and Liuchow in mid-autumn, captured
both places quickly, and then started on the road to Kunming. This was
the Chinese terminus of the Hump, and the nerve center of the bulk of
American activities in China. Staffs in both India and China were in an
understandable dither. The tactical situation was critical and dangerous.

In a conference called by General Wedemeyer and attended by both
General Chennault and me, the theater commander asked us both point-
blank for an all-out performance. My job was to get supplies over the
Hump; Chennault's was to fly the maximum of fighter and bomber
sorties. Chennault replied that he would fly as many missions as his
supply would aUow, but that this number was wholly dependent upon
the amount of Hump tonnage allocated to the Fourteenth Air Force.

Wedemeyer's next comments made us all sit up and take notice.
Chiang Kai-shek had made the decision to move two Chinese divisions
from training areas in upper Burma to reinforce the defense of the vital
Kuimiing area. In addition, the joint American-Chinese staff recom-
mended the movement of thirty thousand more troops into the area from
Sian, far to the north. Wedemeyer said that he concurred fully with both
troop movments.

"And gentlemen," he added quietly, *these movements will have to
take place by air."

The Hump / 121

Normally, of course, it would be the job of the Fourteenth Air Force
to move these troops with its own troop carriers. Chennault pointed out,
however, that if his primary mission was to fly bombing and fighting
sorties, he would need every one of his transports for his own logistics
support. The fat was in the fire. If Chennault could spare no transport
planes to move the Chinese troops, then he would have to agree to permit
ATC transports to carry out the troop movements. These transports
would have to be based in China. We, the ATC, would both move the
troops and support them, as well as the American advisory groups
assigned to the Chinese forces.

Wedemeyer drove home the importance of this job. At the time. Allied
Forces under Adnural Mountbatten were pushing into Japanese-occupied
Burma. Hie success of this operation, Wedemeyer pointed out grimly,
would be completely nullified by the fall of Kunming and its loss as a
terminal of supply. If we lost Kunming, he went on, the Chinese Central
Government would coUapse.

"My directive, gentlemen," he concluded, "requkes that I conduct,
with Chmese and American forces, the maximum effective operations
against the enemy in order to contain and divert the enemy in the Chinese
area and so render support to the war in the Pacific."

These were strong and important words, and I went away from the
conference determmed more than ever to carry out the mission of the
India-China Division, with, I hoped, the co-operation and friendship of
General Chennault. I sent fifty C-47*s and twenty C-46's into China to
carry out the troop movement, according to the plan approved by all
concerned.

But the rivalry continued. It seemed that I could do nothing to placate
him, that everything I did was wrong.

One day, during the Japanese push on Kweilin, I flew over to China
on a double mission, to confer with General Chennault at Kunming,
and with Casey Vincent, commander of the field at Kweilin. I was in
the new four-engine plane, the C-S4, the first one in the theater, and
I wanted both Chennault and Vincent to see it. I also brought along a
dozen cases of beer for Vincent and his men, who were having a pretty
rough time of it. We radioed the tower at Kunming as we approached,
but ^t no answer, as frequently happened, and so I went on to Kweilin.
Vincent had already evacuated a good portion of his men, and the rest
of them were living in caves in the hiU adjoining the field. When I first

122 / OVER THE HUMP

Stepped out of the plane, a couple of explosions came from the hill and
clouds of dust went up, and I nearly turned around and got right back
in. Vmcent, however, came up with a handshake and a grin, and ex-
plained that they were dynamiting the caves they'd been living in to keep
the Japs from using them.

"We've got men out mining the field, too," Vincent said, pointing
them out. "There's not much we can do to stop them from coming, but
we can make sure they don't find much when they get here."

It was hot work, and the men had no objections at all to dropping
what they were doing for a moment and having a bottle of beer. I
showed Vincent through the new plane, and it was such a beauty, so
much what we needed on the Hump, that I'm sure we all forgot about
the Japanese completely while we were admiring it. I stayed around an
hour or so, then left Vincent to the job of destroying the field and the
caves. By the time the Japanese advance patrols did come in the next
day, the Americans had finished the job and departed.

On the way back I called the tower at Kunming, and this tune I was
acknowledged. We came down to see General Chennault. We landed,
taxied up to the Operations Buildmg, and there he stood, waiting for
me. He started chewing me out before I got a foot on the ground.

"What in the hell do you think you're doing, Tunner?" he said. "Fly-
ing all over China in that thing — don't you know my men have never
seen anything like it before? They might have shot you down, and it
would have served you damn' well right. What right have you got flying
over this territory anyway?"

I tried to tell him that we had attempted to call the tower, but I
couldn't get a word in edgewise. He began belaboring the plane. "What
the hell do you need with a four-engined monstrosity like that, anyway?
Damn' thing must drink up gasolme. We'll probably have to give you a
thousand gallons to get you back where you belong."

Then I did get in a word. "No, sir," I said quickly, "I don't need any
gas. As a matter of fact, I intend to have eigjht hundred gallons drained
out for you right now. That's why I stopped in. Then IH take ofiE and
leave."

That made him even madder, and he turned his back on me and
stomped off. I had the gasoline drained out for him, and went on back
to India. My good-will mission had flopped.

During that emergency period my division continued to operate

The Hump / 123

seventy planes in China. We performed only minor maintenance on that
side of the Hump, flying the planes back to India for major work and
inspections* Every plane, on its return to China, took back a full load
of Hump cargo. Things went smoothly. We performed our primary
mission m China, carrying troops to the defense of the Kunming area,
and we were also able to divert a plane now and then to the Hump.
Thanks to Cheimault's excellent combat operations, and to the stubborn
defense of the reinforced ground troops, the Japanese offensive was
halted.

I dreaded returning to the old system and decided to make one more
attempt to get Chennault to see things my way. I prepared a telegram
for his signature in advance, addressed to the Pentagon and authorizing
the ATC to continue basing fifty C-47's in China. I didn't think I had
much chance of getting him to sign it, but I had to do something. I
landed at the field and went to Cheimault's office. There I was told that
the General was not feeling well, and had gone to the doctor's office
for a rubdown. I followed him there, and found him on the table. His
face was drawn, and his eyes had lost their sharp, alert sparkle. I was
instantly sorry I had come. This man was sick.

He looked up at me. "Well?" he grunted,

"I'm sorry, General," I said quickly, "please pardon the intrusion.
I didn't know you were ill."

"Well, you're here, and you probably wanted something," he said.
"Get it off your chest. You can talk in front of the doctor here. As a
matter of fact, he'll witness any decision we reach."

I made as quick and as clear a pitch as I could for his approval of
my continuing the operation of the China-based planes, as he lay there
on the table with his eyes closed and the doctor soothingly rubbing his
back. When I had finished, he grumbled "O.K.," without opening his
eyes. I produced the telegram and a pen and held it steady for him
as he scrawled his name across it. I apologized once more, thanked him,
and left.

This fleet was later augmented by direct order of General Wedemeyer,
authorizmg the continuance of the twenty C-46's in China. We thus
continued the smooth operation of seventy planes, without fear of hijack-
ing. But some months later Chennault apparently noticed my planes
flying around and summoned me to his headquarters. I flew over and
explained the entire situation.

124 / OVER THE HUMP

"Fm sorry if I took advantage of you, sir," I said. "I really did try to
leave when I saw you were sick. But we are running a smooth operation
with those planes, General. We're getting excellent results."

"Oh, all right," he said, and that was the end of it.

I had won a small victory, but I was not too happy about it. General
Chennault was a man with a great fighting heart and a magnificent string
of accomplishments over adversity to his credit. He was an elder states-
man, a proven authority on military aviation, and compared with him
I was only a new boy with some specialized knowledge of flying supplies
around. But I did know what I was doing in air transport, and I knew
that his stafiE was not transport-oriented. I knew that I was right.

Many years later I attended a ceremony in Washington honoring
General Chennault and his lovely Chinese wife. He saw me and motioned
me to him. He was gaunt from the lung cancer which was soon to kiU
him, but his handshake was strong.

"Bill," he said m his thm raspy voice, "I've always wanted to tell you
that if it hadn't been for you and your convictions and your fine ATC
organization, we wouldn't have won the war in China."

That fine and gracious compliment coming from the great old warrior
made everything all right.

While General Chennault and I had been carrymg on our feud, the
planes and crews had been carrying on their missions splendidly under
extremely difficult conditions. We hauled many types of cargo around
Asia, but I can assure you that our greatest headache, even greater than
hauling steam rollers, was in the transportation of Chinese soldiers. I
found the Chinese to be happy-go-lucky people with a great sense of
humor, far different from the more stolid Indians. But there were times
when our pilots must have wished they had more phlegmatic passengers.

Just one Chinese, on the ground, could cause a lot of trouble. One
type of accident was repeated over and over. It seems that the Chinese
coolies believe that an evil dragon is following close behind them at all
times. Apparently they manage to stay just one step ahead. They con-
stantly seek to escape the dragon; that's why Chinese footbridges often
have crooks in them. The Chinese darts around the comer, and the
dragon falls in the drink. To tiie coolies working about our installations
m China, the airplane furnished an even better means of getting rid of
the dragons. All the coolie had to do was run in front of a moving

The Hump / 125

airplane. The closer he came to the whirling propellers, the surer he was
that the dragon following him would be chopped to pieces.

Whenever a coolie would make his dash, all the others would set up
a cheer^ and the narrower the margin, the louder the cheers. Frequently
a dragon-fleemg coolie would cut it too dose and run into the propeller
blades himself. It would make an ungodly mess, with pieces of Chinese
flying everywhere, but it never failed to break up the audience. They'd
roar with laughter and pound each other on the back. What a happy
joke.

It was no joke to those who had to dean up the mess. Nor was it a

joke to a base commander who, seeking a perfect accident record in
hopes of keeping me off his neck, suddenly found himself having to
report the death of one or more Chinese whose timing was just a little
bit off. It got to the point that I actually wrote a six-paragraph letter to
General George requesting permission to classify these dragon deaths as
soinething other than accidents so we wouldn't be constantly having to
report them.

Another source of bright amusement to the fun4oving Chinese was
to see a fifty-five-gallon drum containing gasoline which had been hauled
halfway around the world burst open when unloaded. We had a standard
method of unloading these drums. One or more big truck tires would
be placed on the ground beneath the door, and the drums would be
rolled out so that they'd fall on the tires. Occasionally a drum would
break open even when it landed on the tire, and this we could not help.
But it was not funny to us when the Chinese unloading gang would
deliberately push the tire away just to see the drums pop open.

Though the individual Chinese are usually thin from malnutrition and
hardly impressive as physical specimens, there are so many of them that
they accomplish wonders by sheer numbers. I remember well flying over
an airfield being constructed in a big bend of the Yangtze, and remark-
ing each trip on how the construction was coming along. The field
seemed to grow beneath my eyes. And yet that field was built entirely
by Oiinese using little hammers to break large rocks into gravel, then
carrying the gravel to the runway in little baskets. The baskets didn't
hold much, but they didn't have to, for there were over one hundred
thousand Chiaese men, women, and children carrymg them.

We provided the transportation for many different Chinese troop

126 / OVER THE HUMP

movements. Even before the big resistance at Kunming, the Hump opera-
tion was transporting Chinese troops. We hauled forty on a C-47, sixty
on a C-46, eighty on a C-54. To begin with, we carried raw recaiiits
from China to India for training, and they were anything but volunteers.
The Chinese federal army recruited its troops in a most efficient fashion.
Troops expert at that sort of thing would suddenly descend upon a
neighborhood, cordon off a few blocks, then work into the center like
beaters on a tiger hunt. Once the new recruits were rounded up, they'd
be given a physical examination to determine if they were eligible for
service. This examination consisted solely of their dropping their pants.
If they were old enough to have pubic hak, they were in the Chinese
army.

One morning I was watching a C-46 take off from the field at Changyi

with a brand-new load of recruits. Somethmg happened right after take-
off, and the pilot had to put the plane down quickly in a rice paddy at
the end of the runway. The plane opened up like a rose, and sixty
Chinese swarmed out and took off in every direction. I doubt if they've
been found yet.

Another plane seemed to be shedding Chinese as it roared down the
runway. At the end of the runway the pilot took off and gained some
altitude. Suddenly, the plane flew straight up in the air, then flipped over
on its back and crashed, killing everyone on board. It was obvious what
had happened. The Chinese had gone into a panic. Several had jumped
out to their death as the plane picked up speed. The rest all dashed to
the rear of the plane just after it became aurbome, over-weighting the
tail.

An occasional troop-carrying plane would arrive at its destination
with one or two men short. Asked about it, the happy-go-lucky fellows
would burst into peals of laughter, slapping their thighs and rubbmg
their eyes at the memory. They considered it a big joke to open up the
cargo door, entice somebody to it, point to something interesting below,
and then push him out.

There was frequently great turbulence along the route, and there was
no question but that it shook up the passengers. One planeload of Chi-
nese troops apparently concluded that the pilot and copilot had given
them a rough ride on purpose. As the crew stepped out of the plane,
they were surrounded by a group of angry soldiers, shouting and gestic-
ulating. Two of the soldiers, with bayonets afl&xed to their rifles, backed

The Hump / 127

the pilot and copUot up against the plane. They were about to kill them
when an English-speaking Chinese officer saw the crowd and heard the
cries and ran up to investigate. Even then it took some explaining on his
part before the angry soldiers put up their bayonets.

From then on it was routine procedure to take all weapons and lock
them in the belly compartment of the plane before loading Chinese
troops.

One of the most unpleasant runs was that from Sian down to Kunming.
Sian was a quiet sector on the Japanese front. It was an excellent recruit-
ing area, with one large city and many towns, and the Generalissimo's
recruiters worked it over regularly. They'd march their haul into our
airplanes. Pilots on that run soon learned that the way to stay alive was
to lock the door between the cockpit and compartment, and keep it
closed. It was a five-hour flight, rambunctious all the way. One group
got particularly obstreperous, poimding on the compartment door and
shouting at the tops of their voices. The last thing in the world that pilot
was going to do was open up, but he became fearful that the passengers
would batter the door down. The solution to the problem was an easy
one. He and the crew simply slipped on their oxygen masks and went
on up, higher and higher, until the passengers peaceably went to sleep
from lack of oxygen. When he brought them down and the doors were
opened up, they were all still suffering from anoxia and debarked like
sleepy little lambs.

It gets icy cold at the altitudes at which we had to fly, and in all fair-
ness to the Chinese they must have been pretty uncomfortable. We
occasionally got reports of our passengers building a fire in the middle
of the plane.

To some of our crews the stench was worse than the danger. One
planeload of Chmese recruits could stink up a plane to the point that
you'd gag a hundred feet downwind from it. The troops weren't shining
clean to begin with, and our planes did not contain powder rooms. They
urinated and defecated where they chose, but the worst of it was the
vomit. The inside of a plane after eighty Chinese soldiers had spewed
half-digested rice all over it and each other for five hours produces a
smell you don't even want to try to imagine.

We finally worked out a loading system which took care of everything,
more or less. First, of course, we disarmed the incoming passengers. We
had interpreters explain to them that they should file on board, sit down

128 / OVER THE HUMP

on the floor, and hang on tight to the tie-down rings for take-off. They
were asked please to remember that if the plane bounced around and
they got cold it was not the pilot's fault. Just remain seated, and don't
buUd a fire. An empty gasoline drum was placed on board for sanitation.
After we worked out all the problems of transporting Chinese soldiers,
we had no more trouble and moved tens of thousands. But we neyer did
whip the stink.

Though our Chinese passengers were something of a headache, they
nevertheless made our work easier in the end. For it was this preponder-
ance of man power, with American leadership and American materiel,
which pushed the Japs steadily southward in Burma, past Myitkyina,
past Bhamo, past Lashio, past Mandalay. Now we could fly more and
more to the south with less danger of Japanese patrols on the ground
or interceptors in the air. And as the mountains were not as high m
South Burma, we could now get the full usage out of our big four-
motored Douglas C-54's, which had a limited ceiling but which could
carry a payload of six tons. In addition to its greater size, the C-54 was
faster than the C-46, and these two factors gave it twice the effective-
ness of or Dumbo, even without taking into consideration the greater
dependability and comparatively easier maintenance. As more and more
of the big Dougjas planes became available, I intended to replace all the
C-46's. The bases far up the Brahmaputra in Upper Assam would
eventually be closed down. My future plans called for a fleet of C-54's,
and nothing but C-54's, operating out of bases in Bengal, on the navi-
gable Ganges. In the meantime, Wing Commander Andy Cannon was
making good use of those bases, sending his big planes due east across
Burma, then north to Kunming at a maxhnum altitude of ten thousand
feet going over, twelve thousand feet on the return trip.

With the reliable C-54's droning incessantly through the Asian sky,
we were able to steadily increase tonnage until in the last big month
we delivered seventy-two thousand tons to China — six tunes the amount
which had won a presidential citation in December, 1943. It made no
difference, to us what we were asked to delivbr; we loaded it, flew it over,
and unloaded it on the other end. We haxiled howitzers. We hauled
six-by-sixes, those huge Army trucks with three rear wheels on each
side. We hauled road rollers. These huge pieces of equipment really
presented no great problem. The army supply people simply cut them in
pieces with an acetylene torch and reassembled them at theit destination.

The Hump j 129

It is perhaps only in such dramatic items as these that the person not con-
cerned with military logistics can appreciate the job on the Hump. Who
can imagine 550,000 tons, die amount of cargo flown over the Hump in
the last year of operation?

Here, in a strange land far from home, on the frmges of a mysterious
backward civilization, were all the conditions that bring hazardous flight:
fog, heavy rain, thunderstorms, dust storms, high mountains, a necessity
for oxygen, heavy loads, sluggish planes, faulty or no radio aid, hostile
natives, jungles, and one-way airfields set in mountainous terrain at high
altitude.

Ifs easy to think of the Hump as just one route; actually, of course,
it was many air routes, separated both laterally and vertically, from
thirteen bases in India to six in China. At first we had a narrow corridor
of only fifty miles to accommodate two-way traffic, but the real restric-
tion was in the vertical clearance of eighteen thousand feet to twenty-five
thousand feet. On toward the end we had a corridor two hundred miles
wide with a maximum vertical clearance in the south of from ten thou-
sand to twenty-five thousand feet Through this corridor, every day, were
flying an average of 650 planes, one taking oflE every two and a quarter
minutes of the day's twenty-four hours. Nowhere were air routes more
congested. Pilots had little leeway. They were required to fly at assigned
altitudes and speeds. Yet, with elaborate traffic control systems and
hundreds of men operating them, the location of all aircraft was known
as well as could be expected.

"This was all new. No other aur operation, civilian or mflitary, had ever
before even attempted to keep its fleet in continuous operation all around
the clock, in all seasons, and in all weathers. No other operation had
such extremes of weather and altitudes. And our cargo was varied, to
say the least — ^from V-mail to mules to machinery. The age of air trans-
portation was bom right there on the Hump.

The vast superiority of air transport over surface transport under such
conditions and over such terrain was underscored every day. For three
years of the war there was no means of surface transportation between
the Allies and China. Then the Japanese were driven out of Burma and
the Burma Road again put into operation. Fantastic sums were spent
on it. As many as twenty en^eer battalions were working on it one
time. We on the Hump generally had the use of no more than two
engineer battalions to build and maintain our bases. In China bases were

130 / OVER THE HUMP

entirdy coolie-built, with only one strip, and with no binding material
but the good earth.

But despite all this effort and expense, the maximum amount of sup-
ply carried over the Burma Road at its very peak of operation amounted
to just six thousand net tons a month. Many of our thirteen bases in
India were topping that figure, constantly and without fail. The opera-
tion was not carried on in anonymity. President Roosevelt called our
efforts "an amazing performance" and "an epic of the war." Prime Mm-
ister Churchill, speaking before the House of Conmions, said:

It is well known that the USA has been increasingly engaged hi
establishmg an air route to China capable of carrying immense sup-
plies, and by astoundmg efforts and at a vast cost, they are now
sending over the terrible Himalayas or Hump as it is called I would
not say how many times as much as the Burma Road ever carried
in its pahniest days or will ever carry m years to come. This incred-
ible feat of transport at 20,000 or 22,000 feet in the air, over ground
where engme failure means certain death to the pilot, has been per-
formed by a grand effort which the USA has made m their passion-
ate deske to aid in the resistance of Chma. Certainly no more
prodigious example of strength, science, and organization in this
class of work has ever been seen or dreamt of.

Inddentally, Mr. Roosevelt made a similar comparison of the Hump
Ahlift with the Burma Road later on. Yet work continued on tiie Burma
Road at the expense of the airlift and at a terrific cost m dollars. We all
know now how hard it is to stop a large government project once it is
begun.

Some of the finest expressions of gratitude of all came from the
Fourteenth Air Force for our "efficient operation of the supply Ime to
China" and giving us a full share of credit for its successful combat
operations. In February of 1945, for example, tiie Fourteenth gave us
an official assist m its January bag of 334 Japanese aircraft destroyed;
48 probably destroyed and 215 damaged; 13,500 tons of Japanese ship-
pmg sunk; 58,900 tons damaged and probably sunk.

Before the end of July, it became obvious that we were gomg to set
a new tonnage record tiiat montii. About that time, one hot, humid,
prickly-heat day, I received a message from General Arnold, through
General George, callmg attention to the observance of Army Ak Forces
Day on August 1. The General's message went on to say that he would

The Hump / 131

like for all commands to participate in the celebration in some way.
Usually military observance of such an event consists of a parade^ a
banquet, a round of parties, an open-house reception — somethmg gala.
But in that summer of 1945, 1 was in no gala mood. True, all our mili-
tary operations against Japan were being carried out with success. From
the east, west, and south, we were drawing closer to the Japanese home-
land. But in the exhilaration over our victories was the sobermg re-
minder that the time set for the planned invasion of the islands was
drawing near. We knew that in the assault on the fortified beaches, in
the penetration of the islands which the Japanese could be depended
upon to defend with fanatic determination, our forces were going to pay
a terrible price. It was estimated that the invasion of Japan would cost
a million casualties, with a high percentage of loss of life.

In the shadow of the approaching bloodshed, I saw no reason to
celebrate. I sent back a message saying that the India-Chma Division
would work as usual on Army Air Forces Day, but that in observance
of the day we would make a special effort to fly more tonnage over the
Hump in that twenty-four-hour period than had ever been flown in any
comparable period before.

At dinner that evening, and tossing under the mosquito nettmg for the
rest of the hot, damp night, I became increasingly enthusiastic over this
unique form of observance.

For the staff meeting the following day I brought in Colonel Lonnie
Campbell from the Assam Wing and Colonel Andy Cannon from the
Bengal Wing, and my commander in China, Colonel Dick Bonniley, in
addition to the regular staff officers. Every man greeted the idea with
sincere enthusiasm. It wasn't only that they were industrious, dedicated,
and patriotic men, but they were human too. This full-scale effort would
at least break up the summer doldrums for a day, and give us a chance
to escape our stifling offices, perhaps even the prickly heat. For such a
reward we were all willing to put on a special effort to plan the program
and carry it through — ^which meant workmg like dogs.

As usual, I discussed the operation with each member of my staff,
working out a program for each section to follow.

For example:

The Traffic Department would provide sufficient equipment at each
and every base to haul more tonnage than had ever been hauled before.
Personnel would make sure of a f an: and adequate distribution of

l32 / OVER THE HUMI?

pflots and crews, including us swivel-chair fliers at headquarters, vAio
were eager to get behind controls on that day. There*d be keen competi-
tion between the bases. Nobody had to tell me that big bets were going
to be made, and thousands of dollars were going to change hands. The
apportionment of extra personnel must be fair and square.

Flying safety was charged with the imperative duty of makmg sure
that there would be no compromise with safety on that day. There would
be no short cuts which would incur risk; no taking of chances. This
mandate applied to all sections and departments.

Statistics would see to it that there'd be a prompt flow of information
from every base to headquarters and back to every base. Everyone in
the division would be interested in the tonnage flown by both his own
base and all the others. We wanted reports to come in constantly.

Operations got busy planning the routes to be flown for each base,
and take-off and landing procedures for unusually heavy traffic. Not just
one plan had to be worked out, but several — ^plans for bad weather as
well as for good, plans for every unusual condition that might come up.

Communications, which could expect an unusually heavy workload,
had to begin planning work schedules from that moment on in order to
have a large supply of technicians on duty and standing by on The Day.
If they got the activity I expected, traffic-control operators, tower and
teletype and radio operators were all going to wear out fast.

Supply, of course, had to get in a surplus of everything from spare
engines to coffee. And another item that could not be overlooked was
cargo. Thousands on thousands of drums of gasoline had to be readied.
It would be mighty embarrassing if, after all this painstaking prepara-^
tion, we suddenly found ourselves with nothing to haul.

Maintenance had the big job of preparation. We needed a mg^yimuTH
of aircraft ready for the big day, yet we could not decrease the flymg
time or flights across the Hump on the days preceding. We were not a
tactical unit which could "stand down" its airplanes and get them ready
for a big push. We had daily quotas to make, and they were inviolate.
So the mechanics and engineering officers put in double night duty for
three days getting the aircraft caught up on their coming fifty- and one
hundred-hour inspections, changmg high-tune engines so that no routine
changes would be due on our big day and generally working like beavers
without regard to hours. I don't believe Bob White and his small group

The Hump / 133

of supervisors slept for more than a few hours during this three-day
period of preparation.

At our first staff meeting I made it clear that all personnel, with the
exception of the barest minimum number necessary for emergencies,
should be encouraged to go to the various bases and actually participate
m the operation. When the big day came, everybody did just that. They
all got out and worked. The whole thing was brand new. Nothing like
this had ever been done on the command scale before. Though we kept
going at full throttle for the full twenty-fomrs hours — don't think any-
body slept — ^there was a camaraderie and a spkit that made it more fun
than work. We all pitched in together.

I flew three round trips over the Hump during that twenty-four-hour
period myself. And when I reached Kunmmg, whom did I find there
waitmg to unload my plane, along with cooks and clerks and Chmese
coolies, but my chaplain.

When the day was over, and the statisticians had worn out their
pencils figuring up the totals, it was plamly obvious that the India-China
Division had made history on Army Air Forces Day. The division had
flown 1,118 round trips over the Hump, with a payload of 5,327 tons.
This averaged out to just a litfle over two trips per available airplane.
One plane crossed the Hump every minute and twelve seconds. Four
times a minute a ton of materiel was landed in China.

One C-54 flew three round trips that day, being in use twenty-two
hours and fifteen mmutes. Scores of planes averaged over twenty hours
a day. And with everybody pitching in to help on the ground, tum-
aroimd times also averaged out to a new low. One C-54, returning from
one round trip, landed at its India base, received routine inspection, was
loaded, and took off with its new crew all in the space of twelve minutes.

"It is with a feeling of great pride in my command," I said in a special
message to all bases, "that I announce the following results of India-
China Division record lift to China on Army Air Forces Day You

did not turn in this remarkable performance, unprecedented in air trans-
port history, because you had good planes, good weather, and good luck.
You did achieve it because each of you, every officer and enlisted man
oh every base involved, knew his job and gave it all he had. Even cooks
and clerks and chaplains pitched in to add another drum or cut another
minute from the turn around. It was everybody's day and everybody's

134 / OVER THE HUMP

record. From this experience of top production under pressure you have
added greatly to our know-how for the future. Above all, you have given
the world new proof that American planes plus American equipment
are an unbeatable combination. To all of you for your fine teamwork
and for the tonnage it took to China go my warmest congratulations,'*
Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Commanding General of
United States Forces, China theater, cabled:

SUCH AN ACHIEVEMENT COULD ONLY BE ACCOMPLISHED BY HARD
WORK AND LOYAL COOPERATION OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL OFFICER,
ENLISTED MAN AND CIVILLY ASSIGNED TO THE INDIA CHINA BURMA
DIVISION OF THE ATC. THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF YOUR COMMAND
ON ARMY AIR FORCES DAY WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS ONE OF
THE OUTSTANDING RECORDS OF THE WAR.

Perhaps the most heart-warming result of the big day to me was the
accident rate. It was zero. In all that flying, and flying under pressure,
there was not one single accident. Indeed, all through the days of August
following, the accident rate remained at a new low. There were twenty
accidents in the 136,000-plus hours flown that month, a rate of .154,
again a new low record for the Hump. It took only a minute's work with
a pencil to produce graphic proof that our methods had been successful.
If the high accident rate of 1943 and early 1944 had continued, along
with the great increase in tonnage delivered and hours flown, America
would have lost not 20 planes that month, but 292, with a loss of life
that would have shocked the world.

August, 1945, was of course the last big month of the airlift, for that
was the month the Japanese surrendered. The war was over, but large-
scale airlift, the conception and development of whi6h took place there
on the Hump, was just beginning. Halfway around the world, in a
forgotten operation over high mountains and dangerous terrain, we
pioneered it and established it. Lord knows there were areas in the world
where the idea of air transport might have been tested a little more
easily, but the Hump was designated as the scene of this great provmg
ground by the exigencies of war, and perhaps it was just as well. After
that we knew air transport would work anywhere.

Every commander of a successful operation owes a great debt of
gratitude to his staff, whether he admits it or not. In my case, I received

The Hump / 135

great satisfaction in observing the men I had chosen knit together, grow
up together, and begm functioning together as a smooth, efficient team.
They worked long hours, under high pressure, but they got the job done,
and they mamtained their mutual respect, each for the other. There was
no jockeying for position, no attempts of one to trap another. Each man
knew his capabilities and those of his fellow officers and used this knowl-
edge for the success of the mission. They were dedicated men, and after
a few months of shakedown I would have pitted my staflE there in the
ICD against any other Army Air Forces staff anywhere. Yet not one
had been a professional military man before the war. In my entire com-
mand, as a matter of fact, I rarely had more than a few professional
soldiers, and among my seven thousand officers, could have counted the
number of West Pomters on the fingers of one hand.

Many of my staff members went on to serve in successive emergencies
following World War II, climbing on up the ladder of success. Their
enthusiasm for the job they were able to do, the job they loved to do,
rubbed off on their assistants and junior officers. This zeal for air trans-
port, the willingness and the know-how to get the job done, spread
throughout the entire Air Transport Command over the years. That ex-
cellent and efficient group of men not only made the Hump the great
military success it was, but they were directly responsible for scores of
capable junior officers going on to serve the Air Forces well in the tech-
nical and demanding field of air transport. Thus on the Hump was set
in motion for the future the steady supply of skilled, trained, and oriented
experts whose necessity to successful airlift was demonstrated in the
same operation. For another maxim proved there on the Hump was that
only such men, schooled in and dedicated to air transport, can direct this
complex new military service with full efficiency.

In the adversities, the extremes, and the eventual triumph of the Hump
Airlift was cast the mold for all future air transport, both civilian and
military. Airlift proved itself not merely feasible, but practical, and
superior to other transport in many ways. The most efficient methods
for its successful operation were developed there in that laboratory at
the end of the world; those methods could be picked up and put down
anywhere. From the Hump on, airlift was an important factor in war,
in industry, in life.

CHAPTER IV
The Orient Project

i.0 A GREAT majority of the military persomiel scattered all
over the world in the closing days of World War II, the surrender of the
Japanese on August 15, 1945, meant simply that the war was over and
they could go home. To a few of us in au- transport in the Far East, how-
ever, the end of the war was the beginmng. For years we had been going
about our duties with the goal of defeating the enemy. But in the closmg
monfts of the war, particularly in Asia, we began to realize a more
positive potential of au- transport. Time and events had coincided to
bring this Utfle group of disciples of air transport, complete with know-
how and equipment, to the very area on the globe most in need of it.
The comparatively tiny portion of the world we were operating in. South-
east Asia, contained half of the world's population. Man had lived here
for ages. Yet for all their teemmg milUons, theu: ancient cultures, these
people had practicaUy no knowledge of each other. They had Uttle or
no communication with even their near neighbors.

It is difficult to explain to Americans and Europeans, so accustomed
to quick transportation, just how nonexistent it was in these lands which
abounded in other forms of culture. Calcutta and Shanghai, for example,
are two of the great cities of the world. Yet, when I knew them, in 1945,'
the sole means of transportation between the two was by ship around
the Malay Peninsula, somewhat like sending a letter from San Francisco
to New York by way of the Panama Canal. It was a long and tortuous
and expensive way to travel. Though India and Burma were next-door
neighbors, there was no raflroad connecting them, none between Burma
and China, none between the Malay States and Thafland. In Chma
proper surface transportation was such that it took months to get any-
where. India was just as bad. Three of my most important bases were
in East Bengal, now East Pakistan. They were only an hour away by

136

The Orient Project / 137

air, but because of the great Ganges River that lay between them and
my headquarters near Calcutta, surface transportation would requke
several days. We'd have to go down the Hooghly River, which serves
the port of Calcutta, to the Bay of Bengal, along the coast for a hundred
miles, then up the Ganges to Dacca, from which port fhe bases could be
reached by land transportation.

"You mean to tell me," I said, "that there's no bridge, no ferry, over
the Ganges?"

"None that we know of, sir," my mformant told me.

"Well, let's make sure about that," I said. "Let's send out a fleet of
jeeps to explore every road that bends toward the river for five hundred
miles up from Calcutta. Follow every one of them to the end to see if
there isn't some kind of a native ferry there."

Fmally we located a small ferry at a town several hundred miles
upstream. It did us little good, however, as there was only a cow trail
leading down into Bengal on the other side. And the ferry was hardly
big enough for a cow at that.

With such difficulty in communicating an idea from one locality to
another, let alone transportmg a bag of rice, it was no wonder that half
of that seething mass of humanity lived in poverty and hunger, in miser-
able surroundings. It was a world of constant conflict, between people
and their government, between peoples, between governments. No one
kliew what anyone else was thinking or doing.

What a marvelous opportunity we had there. With our planes and
our know-how we could be of positive help to these unfortunate mil-
lions. On the other hand, it was obvious to us, even before the Japanese
surrender, that if conditions remained unchanged^ revolt and rebellion
would soon result With the lack of conununications and transport,
actual starvation and plenty could and did live side by side.

I have notes taken at a meeting attended by General Wedemeyer,
General Stratemeyer, and me on the very day of the formal surrender of
the Japanese. At just about the same time the surrender ceremonies were
going forward on the battleship Missouri off the coast of Japan, General
Wedemeyer was leaning forward in his headquarters at Chxmgking to
point out the imminence of civil war in China. After covering the critical
possibility of internal strife in China, and the reasons for it, he strongly
recommended that we should do everything in our power to prevent
hostilities. We all knew that should it come to a showdown between

138 / OVER THE HUMP

Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists, the Communists had a good
chance of winning out. Though we were under no illusions about the
Generalissuno, we did feel that his government was capable of reform,
and we would continue to be able to work with it

I see by my notes that, after considerable discussion, I took this oppor-
tunity to discuss a plan which had been burning within me and which
a small group of my stajQE and I had been turning over and talking about
among ourselves for many weeks. I recommended the establishment of
postwar ATC routes in order to pave the way for eventual American
air transport commercial lines. General Wedemeyer agreed, spedfying
that in the meantime ATC should operate into Shanghai, Canton, Hong
Kong, Tokyo, "and other large Chinese and Japanese cities." And finally,
in the next-to-last item of business, I was asked to submit a plan for ATC
airline operations between these principal cities.

Thus, on the very day the war in the East officially ended, the Orient
Project was bom.

Before we could get started with this large-scale plan to tie half the
population of the world together, an opportunity presented itself by
which we could gain some precious and practical experience. When the
war ended so suddenly in two atomic explosions, an unusual mflitary
situation resulted in which some two million Japanese, most of whom
were toughened troops, remained in occupation of conquered territory
with no Allied troops anywhere near them. In the area about Shanghai,
which had fallen to the Japanese early in the Sino-Japanese war, three
hundred thousand Japanese troops were concentrated. Since MacArthur's
troops were busy occupying Japan, somebody else had to get in there
quickly in order to accept the surrender. The nearest available Allied
force was the Ninety-Fourth Chinese Army, composed of approxunately
thirty thousand troops and stationed at Liuchow. But Liuchow was 1 100
miles south of Shanghai, and between the two points were no railroads,
no highways, and no motor transportation. The United States Navy was
asked if it could send ships up the river, from Hong Kong to Canton,
and transfer the Chinese Army by water to Shanghai. The Navy said
indeed it could, but first the mines had to be cleared. That operation
would take three months, and the actual transportation of troops another
three months. The Ninety-Fourth Army might as well walk to Shanghai.

About that time somebody thought of the Au: Force, and General
Wedemeyer gave me the job. My staff and I accepted the challenge

The Orient Project / 139

eagerly. By this time our teamwork and mutual trust had developed to
the point where we liked tough assignments. This one had many difficult
features. First of all, Liuchow itself was several hundred miles east of
our farthest base in China. From there the route to Shanghai was over
territory which was practically all in Japanese hands. It was readily
apparent that only the biggest, newest, long-range aircraft could possibly
go with these unusual requirements. The situation, of course, called for
Colonel Andy Cannon's Douglas C-54's. By now we not only had over
two hundred of these big, beautiful beasts^ but the know-how in operat-
ing them.

I called Andy to Calcutta and we talked the problem over. Our prob-
lem, of course, was that in the entire area over which the route lay,
mcluding the terminal pomts of Liuchow and Shanghai, there were no
supplies of any kind. Suppose, for example, that our planes were based
in Los Angeles, that the thirty thousand Chinese were to be flown from
Atlanta to Boston — and that there was not a drop of gasoline nor one
item of equipment or aurcraft parts east of the Rockies. That would just
about size up the situation.

Our solution to the problem may sound a little bizarre, at first, but
there was no other. Each plane, before leaving its base at Bengal, would
have its gas tanks filled to the maximum, and additional drums of gas
to the maximum allowable weight of the plane would be loaded as cargo.
The big C-54 would then fly over the Hump to Liuchow, where the
drums would be unloaded. The airplane's tanks would be replenished
with gasoline from these drums for the round trip to Shanghai. On its
return to Liuchow, the plane's tanks would be filled again from the res-
ervoir it had itself brought over as cabm cargo, and would return to its
base in Bengal to perfonn the whole procedure over agam. The total
round trip would amount to about 4,615 miles, all to fly one planeload
of eighty soldiers and their equipment the 1100 miles to Shanghai.
Though it seems uncomplicated here on paper, I knew that we would
be beset with problems, chiefly in maintenance and communications. I
knew that Andy Cannon could handle the job, and in appreciation in
advance I named the entire operation after him. From then on it was
the Cazmon Project.

It had been eight years since Shanghai had fallen to the Japanese. We
had no idea of what we would find there. Fortunately, I had an all-
around good man — trouble shooter, excellent pilot, good engineer, and

140 / OVER THE HUMP

trustworthy commander— in the person of Colonel Richard DaVania,
and I sent him to Shanghai in a C-47 to find and secure an airport and
get it ready to receive thirty thousand Chinese soldiers. As far as we
knew, he and his crew would be the first, and only, Americans in
Shanghai.

Dick DaVania's entry into Shanghai was somewhat less than fortui-
tous. To begin with, his navigator made a mistake in time, and he had
to find the unknown city, as well as a landing field, after dark. Finally,
with twenty minutes of gas left, he brought tihe plane down at night on
a small field, havmg no idea whether it would be pockmarked with
bomb craters, or crisscrossed with Japanese trenches. Fortunately, it was
neither.

A Japanese officer met the plane, saluted stiffly, and informed
DaVania that he had no business on the field and would get off imme-
diately. There was no humility then in these Japanese soldiers. They
were fat and sassy, still living off the fat of the land, and they didn't
understand the surrender at all.

DaVania stood his groupd and was finally taken into the city to high
headquarters. After a two-hour wait, he was told that he would be
turned over to the American mission at the Park Hotel. Dick nodded
wisely, but actually this was the first he had heard of the American
mission. He was driven to the lobby of the luxurious hotel, and there
another discussion began. Suddenly an American civilian strode forward,
brushing the Japanese officers aside like coolies. He told DaVania's
escort m firm language to stop meddling in American affairs and to leave
the hotel at once. He introduced hunself as Mr. Healy, and formally
escorted DaVania up to the floor occupied by the American mission.
DaVania soon divined that the American mission, entire floor and all,
was Mr. Healy. He had escaped from a Japanese internment camp a
few days before, made his way into the city and, with his command of
oriental languages and knowledge of the East, had taken over. Wherever
you go, you can always count on finding an American operator there
ahead of you. DaVania and his party were provided with lavish rooms,
took hot baths, and then sat down to the finest steak dinners they'd had
in years.

Next morning Mr. Healy officially recognized Colonel DaVania as
the senior American officer in Shanghai and suggested he proceed with
full authority. Dick wasn't the bashful type, and although it wasn't ex-

The Orient Project / 141

actly easy for one American to arrange with the Japanese for the advent
of thirty thousand Chinese to whom they would surrender, he did it
.1 had in the meantune moved to advance headquarters in Kunming, and
DaVania got the word to me that very day that the airport was waiting.
Within twenty-four hours the Cannon Project was landing Chinese troops
there.

This in itself was ironical, almost comic. The Japanese troops in
Shanghai were fine-looking soldiers, big and sturdy, well fed, well uni-
formed, and well housed. The conquering Chinese Army, however, was
a sorry-looking bunch indeed. I doubt if any of the Chinese soldiers
weighed over 120 pounds; uniforms were poor to begin with, and the
layers of dirt didn't help. They wore sandals with no socks, so that be-
tween their sandals and the bottom of the le^ings then: ankles were
bare. Furthermore, they were all lousy, were continually scratching, and
in addition, they smelled. I know from personal experience, for I went
into Shanghai on one of the first planes in order to look into the dozens
of activities a conmiander should concern himself with — airdrome facil-
ities, reqmrements to sustam a heavy operation such as adequate per-
sonnel to handle operations clearances, supply and maintenance problems
that might arise, permanent and transient quarters, commimications, and,
of course, those delicious steaks. When getting off the plane in Shanghai,
it was quite amusing, although somewhat disheartening, to see the
bedraggled and filthy Chinese troops climb out of the ship almost literally
into the arms of well-armed and robust soldiers standing guard. One
could almost see the Japs thinking, How in the world did we lose to
troops like these?

The food and accommodations in the Park Hotel were fully as good
as DaVania had advertised. By the time I arrived, the place was a mad-
house, with Americans swarming all over the place signmg chits for
everything with names like George Washington and Abraham Lincohi.
Fortunately one of my young officers, Major Al Hamed, had been man-
ager of the famous Cloisters at Sea Island, Greorgia, in civilian life, and
I brought him in to straighten out the hotel and then operate it. In the
meantime, though, it was one big party.

If the hotel was a madhouse, however, the city was worse. Thousands
on thousands januned the streets around the hotel just in order to see a
real-live American. The Japanese soldiers, very much in evidence and

142 / OVER THE HUMP

well armed, had to rope off the area around the hotel to keep their
conquerors off our necks.

This peculiar situation obtained in many of the cities and areas of the
Far East. Shortly after this quick trip to Shanghai, for instance, I went
in my own plane to Hanoi, then French Indochina, now North Vietnam.
With Red Forman piloting the C-54, we located the grass landing strip
and circled it prior to landing. Looking down, I could see a large num-
ber of troops beneath us and wondered who they were. After Red had
brought the plane down and we started taxiing in, I wondered no longer.
They were Japanese, fully anned, lining both sides of the taxi way. As
I descended from the plane, a Japanese General came marching out to
meet me. He was all dressed up with brilliantly shining boots and a
samurai sword, and accompanied by a guard of honor of officers. I sud-
denly realized that he was all dolled up in order to formally surrender
the city to me. The last thing I wanted was to take over Hanoi. I was
hot and tired, and so was my own guard of honor — ^Red Forman, Gordon
Rust, a red-headed corporal who spoke French, a few staff officers, and
a couple of apprehensive GFs. Through the General*s interpreter I ex-
plained that we were there merely to look the situation over and to
arrange for housing in the city proper for a detachment which was
coming in. The General provided us with a jeep — ^American, of course
— and we proceeded on into the city. It was a drive of about ten miles,
and every half-mile we encountered a concrete pillbox with a detachment
of Japanese troops. They snapped smartly to attention as we approached,
presented arms as we went by. They were fine-looking soldiers, well
uniformed, well cared for.

As we drove into the neat, typically colonial city, we saw no French
flags. Instead, every house flew the red standard and gold star of the
Annamese National Party — ^Viet Nam. Posters reading "Independence
or Death" were everywhere. We unexpectedly but happily met an
American Infantry General, who had just come in with a small party of
American troops by a road on the other side of town. He told me he was
to run an American military mission there until some sort of order and
control took place in that bewildered country. His intelligence people
had reported to him that there was great tension in the city, it was
bitterly anti-French, and that this very evening all the French were to be
killed by the natives. Certainly I have never seen a more terrified people
than those French who had remained. And weU they might be, for sev-

The Orient Project / 143

eral were shot or stabbed nightly — ^although no major or mass killings
did take place.

I discussed with the General our plans for a detachment of men to
handle our ATC transport planes as they came in, pomting out that these
planes would serve him and other Americans who'd be coming into
Hanoi. He gratefully guaranteed to provide the detachment with every-
thing he could get himself.

We stayed in the city too late, for as we drove to the field it was
already getting dark. About halfway to the field, in an area where there
were no protecting Japanese troops, we saw ahead a huge mob of white-
robed milling people, all shouting and making angry demonstrations
toward our jeep. They filled the road so we could not pass- When we
stopped, they immediately surrounded us. They were all native Anna-
mese, all mad to the boiling point, and armed with a wicked conglomera-
tion of weaponry, mostly long knives or spears tipped with steel blades.
They brandished these things at us. I told the officers with me to cock
their pistols, and the red-headed corporal to start talking French. He
did, and fast. It seemed that the natives had come to the conclusion
that we were a party of French returning to take over the colony, and
obviously the French were the last people these natives wanted to see.
Somehow the corporal managed to convey to them the fact that we
were Americans, not Frenchmen, and they simmered down. Finally the
line opened up and we escaped the angry natives we had liberated to
continue the drive along the road guarded by our erstwhile enemy.

To return to the Caimon Project, it all went off most smoothly. The
troop movement began on September 9, and ended September 28, well
ahead of schedule. In less than three weeks we flew over four hundred
sorties, moving 26,237 Chinese troops well over a thousand miles, be-
tween two points far removed from our nearest base. Two subsequent,
smaller troop movements brought the total of troops to over thirty-one
thousand and about three thousand additional tons of equipment. This
made the seventh time within the space of twelve months that we had
moved a complete army from one place to another in the China-Burma-
India area.

In the meantime, the division was carrying on another project a little
closer to the heart of the homesick GI's in that part of the world. This
was Project Hope. During September and early October we were averag-
ing one thousand GI passengers a day over the Hump from Chma, all

144 / OVER THE HUMP

homeward bound. By the middle of October we had flown twenty thou-
sand men back to India, the first step on the long road home. All this
time we were continuing to fly in supplies for those who were left.

If there had ever been any doubt in our minds as to whether we could
take on the ambitious, even grandiose plans for the Orient Project, there
was none left after the success of the Cannon Project. It proved that
we could do what we had thought we could do all along. And as we
penetrated into more and more areas which had previously been occupied
by the Japanese, we could see more and more need for it.

Immediately after the war ended, I began putting detachments of
fifteen men each at important points as at Hanoi, all over eastern Asia.
I could see that Americans would be going into these places, and, what
was more important from a humanitarian standpoint, other Americans
would be coming out. These would be prisoners, internees, and an
occasional poor devil who had been hiding out in the jungle for years.
The least we could do for those people was to get them unmediately
to places where they could be given medical attention, food, and com-
fort. We had the planes, we had the men, and we began immediately.
We soon had detachments operating in Peking, Shanghai, Lanchow,
Canton, and other Chinese pomts, as well as in Hanoi, Bangkok, Ran-
goon, Saigon, Singapore, all the way down to Batavia in Java.

These detachments got the job done, too. By contrast, -when I went
to Singapore for the ceremony of the formal surrender of the Japanese
to the British on September 12 — almost a month after the formal sur-
render to the American forces — I was amazed to see thousands of Eng-
lish people, military and civilian, men, women, and children, still livmg
in the old tent camps in which the Japanese had held them for years.
"Why in the world are these people still here?" I asked. The answer was,
simply, that the British had no way to take them out and get them home
to England. The food was better now, and the gates were open, but they
still remained in the camps, waiting for British shipping. By that time
every American internee or prisoner of war had long since been flown
out to freedom, through our immediate action.

Carrying on this work brought me closer to the peoples of the Far
East. More and more it became obvious that if matters were permitted
to pursue their normal course, there was going to be war and strife all
through this area. Wherever we went — ^to the individual cities of China,
to Indochina or Cambodia or Thailand or Burma or Java or anywhere,

The Orient Project / 145

the people we met were isolated from all the other people. One Chinese
city was so isolated from another that neither had an idea of the other's
rate of exchange; this worked out well for some of our enterprising pilots
who cleaned up thousands of dollars tradmg in money, but it could only
foretell disaster for the residents of those cities. To the south, you would
find that the people who are now Vietnamese had no contact with their
neighbors m Laos, or Cambodia or Thailand or Burma; none knew the
other. As I went from place to place, one thought kept running tiirough
my mind: What this part of the world needs is to be tied together.

Actually we had started thinking about this even before V-J Day,
but events and travel after the Japanese surrender accelerated our
planning. If you'll take a look at a map of that part of the world, you'll
get a better idea of what we had in mind. Operations in Chma would
be centered in Shanghai and extend to Chinese Turkistan on the west,
to Harbin and Mukden in the northeast, and south to Shanghai and
Canton. Korea and Japan would be tied in with this network to the
northeast, Okinawa and Formosa to the east, the Philippines in the
southeast, and what is now Laos and Vietnam, as well as Thailand,
Malaya, and Indonesia, to the south — and, of course, Burma and India
to the west. In that comparatively small part of the world's area lives
a full half of the total population on the planet, and we were gomg to
help those people get to know each other.

I had the full support of General R. A. Wheeler, the India Theater
commander, and General Wedemeyer, the China Theater commander,
for the Orient Project. They were there; they could see our work. After
I had secured their approval, and also received Stratemeyer's O.K., I
presented the plan by mail to General George in Washington. He, too,
saw its value, and passed it on to higher authority for approval. In the
meantime, we got to work planning the entire operation. We already
had the planes, the parts, and the airdromes. At war's end we had
over two hundred C-54's flying the Hump; we would need only fifty
of them. As for personnel, we figured we'd need about five thousand.
I had forty-five thousand officers and men already in the theater in the
India-China Division, and I had no doubt whatsoever but that the
necessary number of them would be more than willing to get in on the
ground floor of this exciting new venture. These were men who liked
flying, liked air transport, and many of them would leap at the chance
to continue in these dramatic surroundings. This would be a peacetime

146 / OVER THE HUMP

project, of course, and we planned to get approval to bring the wives
and families of the men to them.

We made a plan for every eventuality we could think of for com-
munications, for supply and maintenance, for housing our people. We sat
down and worked out actual schedules interconnecting Shanghai, Cal-
cutta, Lanchow, Peking, Kunming, Chungking, Canton, Manfla, Tokyo,
Seoul, Hanoi, Singapore, Batavia — and all the rest.

In my first letter addressed to all the subordinate commands in the
India-China Division, I asked for volunteers for additional postwar
service. The letter contained the following sentence: "The activities of
the command will become increasingly a foreign airline operation."
Here we ran into our first real problems. Some of the men interpreted
this to mean that a conounercial profit-makmg akline would tiius be
operated with military personnel. The rumor also spread that the word
"volunteer" was loosely used, and that actually strong pressure would
be brought to bear to keep men in the theater. At the time there were
still many thousands of American troops m China, and they had to be
fed until we could bring them out. The only way we could do this was
by plane, so it was necessary to continue the airlift. We couldn't run
it without personnel, and it was necessary to keep many men on. This
somehow led to the rumor that they were being kept on to run the
Orient Project. Both nmiors were completely erroneous. When I first
heard them, I immediately instituted a public-relations program to in-
form all personnel in the division of the true facts and purposes of the
Orient Project, and that it would be operated entirely by volunteers.
But in the meantime another problem came up.

When the war ended, pressure was brought, quite naturally, from
mothers and wives and sweethearts and children, to bring their menfolk
home. It gave every politician, high and low, a chance to curry favor
with the voters by joining in the cry.

One group of congressmen, junketing about the world, came to visit
us in India. It was suggested to me by advance wire that it would be
nice to search through the command and get together a group of con-
stituents of each of the visiting congressmen. To my later regret I did
just this. When the legislators arrived in one of our planes at fhe Dum
Dum airport in Calcutta, I was able to present to each one a group
of men from his home district. Ill never forget what one congressman
did. He walked to his group, threw his arms around the shoulders of

The Orient Project / 147

one very young fellow, led him aside, and without any other prelimi-
naries asked in a loud whisper, "Why are they keeping you here, son?"

The group of congressmen moved on across India to Karachi, where
they called a meeting of all the enlisted men in the area, with officers
specifically banned. At this huge meeting they called for complamts, and
apparently the gripes came in by the bucketful. Most of the bellyachmg,
however, was concerned with how this martinet Tunner was going to keep
aU of them in this Godforsaken land agamst then: will to work for some
private aurlme. Naturally the congressmen got steamed up, as well they
should have if those had been the correct facts, and dashed back home
to stop the foul deed on Capitol Hill.

By the tune I had ordered an investigation and separated the rumors
and the misinterpretations from the facts, the congressmen were all
back in Washington, had rendered a report, and couldn't care less.
However, the cry of "bring the troops home" was louder and louder
throughout the whole world, and I realized it was going to be difficult
to save the Orient Project. Despite the clamor I fully believed we had
the right answer, so far as we could provide it with air transport, to
the problems resulting from the peace. I was determined to stay there
and see it through, and I was convinced I could lick it. In the meantime,
using the unwieldy point system, we were sending thousands of men
home each day.

The point system was particularly damaging so far as we were con-
cerned because we were one of the few organizations that had to keep
operating. Actually there was little difference in what we did in peace
and in war. We modified our urgencies to get tonnage moved, imposed
much higher safety standards, and did all possible to avoid further
loss of life through accidents. Nevertheless men had to be moved out
of China and the Indian theaters, supplies had to be gathered so far
as possible and brought into depots, the job of closing up had to be
accomplished, and we had to fly transports to accomplish these tasks.
Many of my staff who were normally civilians had to be sent back and
be replaced by others who were career men.

Frequently the men with the highest points were those with special-
ties we sorely needed in order to carry on our mission. At one base,
for example, all the cooks happened to be high in points, and we had to
send them all home. At another base the high-point epidemic happened
to hit all the sheet-metal workers, so vital to maintenance, and we lost

148 / OVER THE HUMP

all of them at once. It was sheer diaos» trying to do anything sensible.

I thought I saw the handwriting on the wall when, just a short time
after the division had first been ordered to evacuate all the supplies
from Burma — ^thousands of tons— the orders were canceled and the
decision made to sell these supplies to the Burmese government. The
price eventually got down to about two cents on the dollar. I could
tell from the wires that my staunch supporter, General George, was
gettmg uneasy about continuing with our "Orient-Project'' planning.

Then one morning I received a wire informing me that my wife had
suddenly been stricken with a serious malady. We had managed to stay
together during most of the years of our marriage; our oldest boy, Bill,
Jr., was bom in San Antonio and Joseph Carruthers in Memphis. When
I went to India, however, she and the boys went to live with her mother
in Meridian, Mississippi. (She was the former Sarah Margaret Sams
of Meridian.) A day or two before, according to the wire, she had
taken the two boys to New Orleans to see a dentist, and while there
had suddenly and mysteriously lost consciousness. She was at that
moment unconscious in Touro Infirmary. The wire closed with a per-
sonal message from General George to the effect that since the war
was now long over and many men were akeady home in the States, I
ought to go to New Orleans mmediately.

I returned the wire saying I would get there as quickly as I could
and in the meantime trusted that friends would take care of the two
boys. I flew night and day for three days and finally reached New
Orleans. By that time my wife had recovered consciousness. Her doctor
said he didn't know what it was, but that it could be a brain tumor,
and that it might be six months or even a year before he would be
able to make a positive diagnosis. In the meantime she seemed quite
well again. I took her and the boys back to Meridian and stayed there
the rest of the day, then hurried on to Washington.

In Washington I talked with General George for an hour about the
demobilization, the effect of the point system, and the future of the
Orient Project. He was gloomy about the future of the military in
general. He had been getting reports of the disintegration of our forces
all over the woiid, due largely to the cry, "Let's go home!" and the
point system. But he gave permission to continue with the project, at
least for the moment.

Back in India, after spending nine days away from the job, seven

The Orient Project / 149

in continuous travel, I pitched into the battle for the Orient Project
again and began making some solid headway.

A montii later, while I was flying to Peking to set up a detachment
there, another wire came to me on the plane. My wife had had another
attack, the cause had been definitely diagnosed as a brain tumor, and
the doctor wished to operate as soon as I could get there. Again my
thoughtful friend and boss advised me to come home. After another
three-day, night-and-day trip, I arrived in the United States on Novem-
ber 11. The operation next day proved the diagnosis correct, but the
tumor was in such an area that nothing could be done. Sarah remained
unconscious after the operation. It was necessary for me to arrange
for her care and the care of the two small boys. She lingered on for a
year and a half, still comatose. Then she died.

And the Orient Project collapsed. The boss had run out on his own
project, and those who had volunteered lost faith.

I am positive that had I been able to remain in India, I could have
held the project together long enough for some airline to take over. I
had no intention, nor did I ever have any, of running it myself after it
got well under way. I fully trusted that some United-States-sponsored
airline or Allied consortium would happily move m.

I wholly favored the philosophy espoused then and even m these
late years by Pan American's Juan Trippe of a single "chosen mstru-
ment" airline, but a chosen instrument only for the immediate area of
Asia. In other words, I favored a smgle national airline for the United
States, just as Air France, BOAC, KLM, and Lufthansa today operate
for their respective countries, but never did I espouse nor sponsor a
"chosen instrument'' akline for all United States overseas an: transport
operations, as most other countries seem to. I did see a real need for
the philosophy in the area of the Orient Project — in the Far East.

I still had the backing of three strong and farsighted men in General
Wheeler, General Wedemeyer, and General George, and witii them
behind me, and me on the scene, I knew we could have gotten the
volunteers for an enterprise which could not fail to become an inter-
national force for good will, understanding, and peace, as well as a
successful commercial venture for someone. I am still positive of this
despite tiie fact that admittedly the enthusiasm of the high echelons in
Washington had become lukewarm by that time. They were desperately
struggling, in the face of demobilization, to prevent a complete break-

150 / OVER THE HUMP

down in the military establishment. As for the opposition of the politi-
cians, it was based on the public clamor for the boys to come home
rather than on any objection to the Orient Project per se.

Would the Orient Project have prevented some of the calamitous
occurrences in that part of the world since the end of the war? My
answer is yes. We know what happened in the Far East without the
Orient Project, and it is safe to say that with it, events could hardly
have been worse. I do not believe that the Orient Project would have
saved Indochina for the French, Malaya for the British, nor Indonesia
for the Dutch; that was certainly not its purpose. But I do think that
improved communication and transportation in that part of the world
would have done much to alleviate the strife and misery that is now
taking place in China, Vietnam, and Laos, and would have been a
positive factor in helping those people find a stronger, happier, more
stable form of life than they have. People who lived side by side, across
a valley or over a mountain from one another, and who had prosperity
on one hand and famine on the other, would at least know there was
food somewhere; better, they would have a means to move critical
supplies to the destitute or deprived areas.

As a career man in the Army Air Forces, a regular officer, I would
have remained in China as long as I was needed, and as long as my
bosses desired. For it would have been in China where the Orient Pro-
ject would have had the most beneficial results. It would have tied that
sprawling land together with a strong transportation network. When
the war ended, there was certainly no great camaraderie between the
Conununist forces and Chiang Kai-shek's government, but at the same
time there was no civil strife between the two forces. They hiad been
fighting a common enemy, not themselves. When the war ended, they
no longer had this bond, nor was there any communication whatsoever
between the two sides. War gradually materialized, grew hot, and the
Communists won. If there had been trade, transportation, and transfer
of ideas and information, I do not believe that, in the first place, there
would have been civil strife on such a scale.

And if there had been, there is every reason to believe that, had the
country been laced with a network of airlines, the Communists would
not have won. After the civil war, I discussed this whole question at
length with Whiting WiUauer, president of Civil Air Transport, Incorpo-
rated, one of three small airlines which tried to operate in China after the

The Orient Project / 151

war, and later an ambassador in Central America. Willauer pointed
out many interesting factors which support my belief that the Orient
Project would have saved China. For one thing, he said. Communist
forces during the civil war demonstrated effectively that they could
immobilize every form of transportation except air transport. The Chi-
nese timetable in the civil war was delayed by at least a year, Willauer
maintains, because of the transportation furnished to the Nationalists
by the three small, unconnected airlines. The Communist sweep south-
ward was delayed at a number of vital points, each of which was sup*
plied exclusively by air for six months or more.

Though America in various aid programs gave to China railroad
equipment, trucks, and ships exceeding two hundred million dollars
in value, these and other surface transportation facilities actually ac-
celerated the advance of the Communists. Neither boxcars nor trucks
nor river steamers can fly away in a successful retreat. Thus, as the
Communists advanced, they obtained more and more surface transporta-
tion equipment, enablmg them to travel that much faster.

Willauer pointed out the great effect of planes on the morale of the
people. The Chinese, like nearly all peoples of the Far East, were still
in awe of the»airplane. It is a unique symbol of support seen by millions
in both cities and the rural areas. The morale factor expresses itself
even more directly in the case of those soldiers and key civilians who
know that should the worst come to the worst, a sure-fire evacuation
route is open to them by air, Willauer's employees were still cheerfully
going about their tasks, even under gunfire, right up until the last minute,
for they knew that they would ultunately be flown safely away.

"This same sense of security must be imparted to the workers, the
soldiers, and the officials of other Far Eastern lands if we expect them
to offer stiff resistance to Communist advances," he said.

And so a solidly potential solution to the troubles of the Far East
died before it even began. The positive achievements we had accom-
plished on the Hump seemed so remote after the f aflure of the Orient
Project. Personally, I was plunged from the peak of accomplishment
and the glory of success to the depths of grief and the despair of failure.
I still do not know how I could possibly have taken any different course
of action, but I do know that my leavmg Asia meant the death knell
of the Orient Project and whatever that might have meant to the Asian
problems of today*

CHAPTER V

The Berlin Airlift

Friday, Black Friday, Friday the thirteenth of August, 1948,
is a date many of us who served on the Berlin Airlift wish we could
forget. It was a day of black scudding clouds, of driving rain. Weather
conditions were not too bad at Wiesbaden as we took off for Berlin,
but as we gained altitude to clear the Harz Mountains we soon ran
into those heavy, thick German clouds that later caused Bob Hope to
remark, "Soup I can take^ — ^but this stuff's got noodles in it!" Lieutenant
Colonel Sterling P. Bettinger was piloting my C-54, good old Number
5549, which had served me so well on the Hump, and my old friend
Red Fonnan was copilot. I sat on the jump seat behind them and helped
them peer at the dark gray nothing ahead through the rain-washed
windshield.

We were not alone in the sky. As Bett followed the prescribed flight
path to Tempelhof Field, calling out into the radio mike the exact
second he passed over the Fulda beacon and swinging the nose of the
plane to the exact heading of 057 degrees, we knew that some twenty
C-54's were flying the same route ahead of us, each three minutes apart
on the nose, each proceeding at 180 miles per hour. Ahead they
stretched out like figures on a conveyor belt; behind we could hear
each addition to the club as he passed over Fulda and gave us his time,
loud and clear. All was well. The Berlin Airlift was seven weeks old. I
had been its commander just fifteen days, and already, I felt, it was
beginning to shape up into my kmd of operation.

But at that very moment everything was going completely to hell in
Berlin. The ceiling had suddenly fallen in on Tempelhof. The clouds
dropped to the tops of the apartment buildings surrounding the field,
and then they suddenly gave way in a cloudburst that obscured the run-

152

The BerUn AirUft / 153

way from the tower. The radar could not penetrate the sheets of ram.
Apparently both tower operators and ground-control approach operators
lost control of the situation. One C-54 overshot the runway, crashed
into a ditch at the end of the field, and caught fire; the crew got out
alive. Another big Skymaster, commg in wi± a maximum load of coal,
landed too far down the runway. To avoid piling into the fire ahead,
the pilot had to brake with all he had; both tires blew. Another pilot,
coming in over the housetops, saw what seemed to be a runway and let
down. Too late he discovered that he'd picked an auxiliary runway
that was still under construction, and he slithered and slipped in the
rubber base for several precarious moments, then ground-looped.

With all that confusion on the groxmd, the traffic-control people began
stacking up the planes coming in — and they were coming in at three-
minute intervals. By the tune we came in, the stack was packed from
three thousand to twelve thousand feet. A space was saved for my plane
at eight thousand feet, and we flew right on into it. Planes behind us,
however, had to climb to the top of the stack — God knows why there
were no collisions. As their planes bucked around like gray monsters
in the murk, the pilots filled the an: with chatter, calling in constantly
in near-panic to find out what was going on. On the ground, a traffic jam
was building up as planes came off the unloading line to climb on the
homeward-bound three-minute conveyor belt, but were refused per-
mission to take off for fear of collision with the planes milling around
overhead.

"This is a hell of a way to run a railroad," I snarled. Red and Bett
wisely said nothing. They knew I had full confidence in both of them, but
they were also aware that at that moment I'd have snapped my grand-
mother's head off.

There could have been no worse possible time to foul up the works.
The very purpose of my trip to Berlin was to attend a ceremony honoring
this efficient, smooth-running operation. Several days before an old
German, a resident of Berlin, had brought us a present. It was, he said,
as he tenderly removed a magnificent watch from its velvet-lined case,
the only thing he had left in the world. Of heavy gold, inlaid with
precious stones, the exquisite old timepiece had belonged originally to
his great-grandfather. It must have been worth five thousand dollars
or more, and to the old Berliner, surely it was priceless. Yet he wanted

154 / OVER THE HUMP

to give it to us, the men of the Berlin Airlift, as "a little token from an
old and grateful heart."

I had accepted his watch in the spirit in which he had given it, and,
for want of a better idea, had told him that I would present it to the
pilot who had made the most flights into Berlm to date. This was fine
with the donor. Headquarters found the pilot who had flown the most
missions — ^his name was Lieutenant Paul O. Lykins — and my staff in
Berlm made arrangements for the presentation ceremony at Tempelhof
on August 13. They set up a speaker's stand, brought in a band, and
put together a complete program, culminating in my presenting the
watch. We anticipated thousands of people.

And here I was flying around in circles over their heads. It was
damned embarrassing. The commander of the Berlin Airlift couldn't
even get himself mto Berlin.

I'd been in stacks before, and I'd be in stacks again, but being the
middle man in this particular totem pole was unusually confining. Usu-
ally, when it's necessary to stack up planes, the tower sends them to a
prearranged area fifty to one hundred miles away from the field to fly
their monotonous circles in the great open spaces. Here we had no such
spaces, just the twenty-mile curcle over the island of Berlin, a city sur-
rounded by Soviet-controlled East Germany. M we got out of that small
circle over the city proper we could well attract Russian fighters or
anti-aircraft fijre. So we were stuck. All these milling planes had no
choice but to land or go back where they came from.

Back where they came from. I grabbed the mike.

"This is 5549," I said. "Tunner talking, and you listen. Send every
plane in the stack back to its home base."

There was a moment of silence, then an incredulous-sounding voice
said, "Please repeat."

"I said: Send everybody in the stack below and above me home.
Then tell me when it's O.K. to come down."

He got the message that time. "Roger, sir," he answered.

I was sitting in the copilot's seat at the time. Bettinger, who was fly-
ing the plane, and Red Forman, leaning over between the two of us,
looked at me with their mouths open.

"And as for you two," I said, "I want you to stay in Berlm until you've
figured out a way to eliminate any possibility of this mess ever happening

The Berlin AirUft / 155

again — ever! I don't care if it takes you two hours or two weeks, that's
your job. I'm going to give this guy his watch and then I've got some
business to attend to with those monkeys in the tower . . ."

The history books dealing with that unsettled period in which the
cold war began may disagree, but to my mind the real success of the
Berlin Airlift stems from that Friday the thuteenth. Actually the Airlift
had begun fifty-one days before, the day after the Russians put in the
Berlin blockade.

News of the blockade, three years after the end of World War U, had
come as much of a surprise to me as to most other American citizens.
I, too, had been trying to begin a normal life after the war, but in my
case it wasn't possible.

As, in the halcyon days foUowing the war, the nation stripped its
great military machine to the bone, I was shunted from place to place
closing down commands and consolidating them. It was not a pleasant
task. I also fully expected to be put back in rank, as was happening to
many of my fellow brigadier generals. During my brief stay at one post,
however. General George called to congratulate me on my promotion
to major general, much to my surprise, not to mention pleasure. At
least, as I moved for the fourth time, I was wearing another star on my
collar.

That star also changed any regrets over a decision I had made. I had
been approached by a group of highly respected financiers who planned
to organize a global air service to be called World Air Freight, Inc. It
would be heavily capitalized, with retired General Hap Arnold chairman
of the board. I would be president, with a salary many times my general's
pay. After the multiakline Ferrying Division and the five hundred
planes on the Hump, running a civilian air freight line of fifty C-54's
seemed to present few problems, and I agreed to the proposition. It
occurred to me that a military man would work twelve hours a day,
often seven days a week, to run an organization ten times as large as a
comparable one in the business world, and receive pay and benefits of
one-fifth that of the businessman. C-S4's were selling for a song as
government surplus, and I located several in excellent condition. The
New York group prepared an elaborate prospectus for presentation to
the public, but almost at the last moment I decided against making the
move. There were many factors in my decision — ^the grief and confusion

156 / OVER THE HUMP

resulting from my wife's comatose condition, being both father and
mother to Bill and Joe, the letdown from years of constant drivmg, the
disappointment over the demise of the Orient Project— but primarily,
I found, after considerable reflection, that I just did not want to leave
the Air Force. I recommended Temple Bowen, my loyal deputy on the
Hump, but apparently the group felt that I was essential, and so World
Air Freight went the way of the Orient Project. It would have been a
financial success; we were confident that we could drum up the busmess
and we had personnel with a good solid background to do the flymg.
The C-54's we were gomg to buy at $75,000 apiece became worth
$675,000 each when the government needed them for the Berlin Airlift
and later the Korean War. That would have been almost $30,000,000
profit right there. Hap Arnold was furious with me for not taking the job.
I ran into him at a cocktail party in Washington, and he practically took
myheadoflf.

"K it wasn't for you, Tunner," he said "we would all be operating a
great airlme by now." But then he turned on the famous smile which
had given him his nickname, and added, "But I don't blame you for
staying with the Air Corps, Bill," I felt better.

Early in 1948 the whole of the Air Transport Command was com-
bmed with a few squadrons of the Naval Air Transport Service to be-
come the Military Air Transport Service. It was to have been a great
combining of competing service activities, just what the public wanted.
Actually, when it was accomplished, we found we had about eighty
thousand Air Force people and four thousand Navy, and it remains iot
even greater disproportion today. Major General Laurence S. Kuter
was picked to be its first commander, and he chose me as his deputy
commander for Operations.

I'd been in my new job only a few days when news from Berlin began
making the headlines. After the surrender of Germany, the country
had been cut into East Germany, under Russian occupation, and West
Germany, with zones occupied by the Americans, British, and French
respectively. The city of Berlin, occupied by all four powers, was located
deep within East Germany. In the happy glow of friendship at the
immediate end of the war in Europe, the free powers occupying Western
Germany had apparently been content with a gentleman's agreement

The Bertin AirUft / 157

to the effect that there would be no interference with surface transporta-*
tion— by highway, rail, and canal — ^into Berlin.

Later a written agreement was made setting up six air corridors, each
twenty miles wide, fanning out from Berlin. Three led to the east or
Conmiunist areas. Of the other three, one led northwest to Hamburg
and one west toward Hanover, both m the British Zone, and the third
led southwest to Frankfurt and Wiesbaden in the American Zone. At
the time Russia seemed to have made the best bargain, for as part of
the deal America set up navigational aid stations and showed the Rus-
sians how to man them. Apparently they had no knowledge whatsoever
of this new science.

It was the reform of currency in West Germany which triggered the
Berlin trouble. On June 19, the day after the reform became effective,
Marshal Sokolovsky, Soviet Military Governor of Berlin, issued an
angry statement in which he referred to Berlin as "part of the Soviet
occupation zone." The Germans residing in the American, British, and
French zones of the city making up West Berlin were terrified. They
remembered all too well when the Russian troops poured into the city
to rape, loot, and murder. It was obvious that the Soviets intended to
drive the Western powers from Berlin and engulf the whole city.

By June 24 the blockade was complete. Reason given for the termina-
tion of rail service was "technical difficulties." Bridges were declared
unsafe, and a one hundred-yard stretch of the rdlroad was torn up. No
foodstuffs, or any other supplies, could be brought into the three western
zones of the city by surface transportation. The Soviets announced that
all food brought into Berlin from East Germany would be distributed in
the East Sector only; it would be necessary for residents of West Berlin
to register there in order to get it. Few did so. When the blockade
began, food stockpiles were sufficient for thirty days. Mayor-elect Ernst
Renter, addressing a mass meeting of over eighty thousand Berliners on
the afternoon of June 24, called for a united defiance of Communism
and was answered by a roar of approval.

The first reaction of General Lucius D. Qay, United States Military
Governor, was to propose putting an American armored column on the
road to Berlin immediately. In Washington the Joint Chiefs of Staff
considered this proposition and approved it with the proviso that the
armored column would not attempt to shoot its way through; if the

158 / OVER THE HUMP

Russians stood fast, the convoy woxild withdraw. It was well known
that the Western powers had only a few weakened divisions in Germany;
the Russians had thirty full-strength divisions in their zone, backed up
by many more in Poland and Czechoislovakia. Qay refused to proceed
under those conditions. "Ill never order troops of mine to run from
the Reds without a fight," he said.

There was no recourse but to take to the air. To supply American
forces in Berlin by air would not present too much of a problem; many
items were already being flown in from bases in the American Zone.
But what about the civilian population? Could an airl% provide the
2,250,000 people of West Berlin with sufficient supplies? Suppose the
blockade extended into the winter, when the population would be sub-
jected to the even greater privations of cold and darkness?

At this point, even to think of supplying a city by air alone was
daring. It had never been done before. Although we who had operated
the Hump Airlift considered that we had proved the capability of air-
lifting anything anywhere, there were many in the government and in
the military, too, who had not heard the word. The Hump had ob-
viously been carried out in a vacuum on the other side of the world
m the midst of a global war.

It was finally decided, there in that frenzied session the evening of
June 24, that food could probably be brought in by air. But even at that
stage General Qay and his staff could see that the commodity which
would place the greatest stram on an airlift would be coal — coal to
furnish light and power to keep the city going and, in the long winter
to come, to provide some warmth.

Qay impulsively put in a call to Major General Curtis LeMay, com-
mander of USAFE.

"Curt," he asked abruptly, "can you transport coal by air?"

For a moment there was silence on the line. "I beg your pardon.
General," LeMay said, "but would you mind repeating that question?"

Qay did. This time LeMay answered promptly. "Sir, the Air Force
can deliver anything."

Immediately, LeMay began mobilizing the aircraft at his disposal.
In all of Europe the Air Force had just exactly 102 C-47's, of less than
three tons capacity, and two C-54's, of ten tons capacity. The British
also had a few C-47's — which they called Dakotas — on hand. This was

The Berlin Airlift / 159

the fleet which was gomg to supply the city of Berlin. The Airlift ran
more or less by itself until Brigadier General Joseph Smith, commander
of the military post at Wiesbaden, was tapped for the job in addition to
his other duties. The news was broken to him at lunch on June 27. In
the first forty-eight hours, eighty tons of flour, milk, and medicine
were flown into Berlin. By July 7 the one thousand-ton mark was
reached. This included the first shipment of coal, packed in GI duffel
bags.

During these first few days an attempt was made to glamorize the
airlift with a fancy name. "Hell's fire," Smith said, "we're haulmg grub.
Call it Operation Vittles." The British sneaked in a pun on then: title:
Operation Plane Fare.

Before the blockade, the city imported 15,500 tons of material daily
to meet its needs. Minimum requirement for survival was estimated at
four thousand tons a day. Clay, at the beginning, estimated seven hundred
tons a day as the maximum to be expected from even a "very big opera-
tion." No one in authority at the time expected the Airlift would last very
long. It was President Truman's opinion that the Airlift would serve only
to stretch out the stockpile of rations in Berlin and thus gain time for
negotiations. Even so, when pressure was put on him to pull American
troops out of Berlin, he said, "We're going to stay, period."

MATS had less than three hundred C-54's at that time. There were
about that many more in other Air Force conunands, particularly the
troop-carrier command. There had been some hesitancy to commit
them — suppose trouble happened somewhere else? But following the
President's blunt statement, more squadrons began moving to Germany.

In the meantime, back in Washington, I was beginning to get restless.
With an airlift taking place m the world, I did not enjoy warming the
bench in Washington. As Deputy Commander of MATS, I felt that if
there was any air transport activity going on anywhere in the world, this
activity automatically became our responsibility. I reported this to
General Kuter, putting it in writing to show him I was dead serious. I
said that I did not think that we could ignore what was going on in
Germany. This was what Congress created MATS for. I ended with
the strong recommendation that he propose to the Chiefe of Staff that
MATS get into this thing all the way, right away.

He read my memorandum and calmly told me to relax. "That's not

160 / OVER THE HUMP

the way to do it, Bfll," he said. *Xet's just sit tight and see what
happens."

I did, but I didn't feel that it was right. No one in the world had our
air transport techniques; we had developed them in the old Ferrying
Command and later the Air Transport Command. Kuter blithely took
off for an inspection tour of MATS operations in the Pacific, leaving
me to mind the store and to fret about Berlin. By now the great signif-
icance of the Berlin Airlift was becoming apparent. Just three years
before these people had been our enemies. They had undergone bomb-
ing and then the postwar deprivations. But now, when the chips were
down, they were choosing freedom. The world by now had definitely
split itself into two armed camps; the free, Western world, and the
slave world of the Communists. This was the first conflict. The forces
of freedom could not afford to lose it.

Yet I could tell, from the reports coming in, that the operation of
the Airlift could stand hnprovement. The capability of an airlift was
unknown in Europe, It was generally unknown m our military. It is not
strange that it was unknown to Qay, I knew both General LeMay and
the actual conunander of the Airlift, Joe Smith, and admired and re-
spected them both as combat officers. But this was not combat. In air
transport everything is different— rules, methods, attitudes, procedures,
results. Even when the tonnage carried by American planes rose to
1500, as it did by mid- July, and the British tonnage to 750, for a com-
bined figure that had not even been dreamed of three weeks before, I
remained convinced that the operation was a job for professional air-
lifters. To any of us familiar with the aurlift business, some of the
features of Operation Vittles which were most enthusiastically reported
by the press were contraindications of efficient administration. Pilots
were flying twice as many hours per week as they should, for example;
newspaper stories told of the way they continued on, though exhausted.
I read how desk officers took off whenever they got a chance and ran
to the ffight line to find planes sitting there waiting for them. This was
all very exciting, and loads of fun, but successful operations are not
biiilt on such methods. If the Airlift was going to succeed and Berlin to
remain free, there must be less festivity and more attention to dull de-
tails, such as good, steady, reliable maintenance.

The Bertin AirUft / 161

But I wasn't the only person who thought the Airlift should and could
be improved.

One morning about two weeks after I had first strongly recommended
that MATS take over the Airlift, an officer brought me a sealed en-
velope from General Hoyt Vandenberg, Chief of Staflf of the Ak Force.
In the envelope was a copy of a highly classified message to General
Vandenberg. It was marked eyes only, which means that the moment
it had been deciphered it was placed in a closed envelope and delivered
to General Vandenberg in person; nobody else could open it. Now he
was entrusting the message to me. I could see why. It was from Lieu-
tenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer, Director of Plans and Operations
of the Army General Staff. General Wedemeyer had commanded the
China Theater during much of the time I was running supplies over the
Hump, and as a long-time recipient of a successful aurlift, he had first-
hand knowledge of its capability. He had gone to Germany to look the
situation over, and obviously the operation of the Airlift there looked dif-
ferent from the one he had known in China. He had discussed the prob-
lem with General Clay at length, and had then fired off this eyes only
message to the top man in the Ahr Force.

The message, as I recall it, began with a straight declaration of fact
to the effect that the Berlin Airlift was definitely capable of either break-
ing the blockade, or of mamtaining life in Berlin while negotiations were
going on. He had seen an airlift work in China, Wedemeyer continued,
and he thought that to insure the success of the Berlin Airlift the man
who had run that airlift should be sent over to Gerniany to run this one.
General Clay, the message continued, was of the opinion that he had all
the know-how and all the people necessary to run the Airlift properly,
but nevertheless he, Wedemeyer, felt strongly that the Aklift should be
entrusted to someone who had run one before. Again he reconmiended
that Tunner be sent to Germany to take it over.

No orders followed the message, however. Several days went by, and
I remained in Washington. It was obvious to me what was going on over
in Germany: The proposal that I take over the Aurlift would be opposed
by Clay, LeMay, and Smith. Clay's opposition was based simply on the
fact that the Airlifi seemed to be working, with tonnage going up every
day, so why rock the boat? As for LeMay, he had a good thing going,
and it was perfectly understandable that he would prefer to remain in

162 / OVER THE HUMP

control of it rather than have some hot-shot come in to throw his weight
around. Maybe I would have felt the same way in his place. By this tune
the LeMay Coal and Feed Delivery Service, as it was jocularly referred
to on both sides of the Atlantic, was making headlines all over the world.
The bases m the American and British zones and the two airdromes in
Berlin were crawling with journalists and observers. There was a con-
stant air of hustle and bustle, and excitement. And still the tonnage in-
creased. There was no question but that LeMay and Joe Smith were
domg a marvelous job, and they were justifiably proud. Had I suddenly
been placed in conunand of a bomber force in a hot war, I would cer-
tainly have been happy to have done as well. But the fact nevertheless
remained that airlift experts run airlifts better than combat experts. The
hustle and bustle and excitement of Operation Vittles in the early days
all comprised a case in point. The last place you should find this type of
activity is in a successful airlift. The actual operation of a successful
airlift is about as glamorous as drops of water on stone. There's no
frenzy, no flap, just the inexorable process of gettmg the job done. In a
successful aurlift you don't see planes parked all over the place; they're
either in the air, on loading or unloading ramps, or being worked on. You
don't see personnel milling around; flying crews are either flymg, or rest-
ing up so that they can fly again tomorrow. Ground crews are either
working on their assigned planes, or resting up so that they can work
on them again tomorrow. Everyone else is also on the job, going about
his work quietly and efl&ciently. The real excitement from running a
successful airlift comes from seeing a dozen Imes climbing steadily on a
dozen charts — ^tonnage delivered, utilization of aircraft, and so on — and
the lines representing accidents and injuries going sharply down. That's
where the glamour lies m air transport.

This, I presimie, is what General Wedemeyer had seen in our opera-
tions in India and Chma. At any rate, he returned to Washington and
went in to see Vandenberg. I learned later that Vandenberg was seriously
considering sending me over anyway, but the visit from Wedemeyer, a
highly respected senior officer, tipped the scales. Vandenberg called me
to his office.

"O.K., Bill," he said, "it's yours. When can you leave for Berlm?"
"Right away, sir," I said. While the iron was hot, I asked his permis-
sion (General Kuter was still in the Pacific) , to take with me a few highly

The BerUn Airttft / 163

trained men, in whom I had confidence, in order to get under way imme-
diately. I promised to use discretion so that the work of MATS or any
other organization I got them from would not be disrupted.

"Get going," Vandenberg said, "but be reasonable. Tell Personnel the
names of the people you want, and their orders will be cut right along
with yours."

Not all the men I would have liked to take were available. Temple
Bowen had retired, Gordon Rust and Hammie Heard were with civilian
airlines, Ike Teague wais back with his Little Rock law practice, Ken
Stiles was the assistant to the durector of the United States Budget, and
Eddie Hastings was managing the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, in New York.
But some of the old faces were still available, and there were several
younger men whom I had come to know and to have full confidence in.

Heading the delegation of Hump old-timers was the red-headed colo-
nel whom I'd first known as a civilian weekend flier back in Memphis,
Red Forman. He woxild be my chief of operations. Next came Major
Edward A. Guilbert, who had handled traffic for me on the Hump. For
the new operation he would be the over-all director of traffic, responsible
for the handlmg of cargo all the way through — loading it, unloading, and
accounting for it. Even if Eddie hadn't been the expert that he was in
his field, I think I would have brought him along for his good common
sense as well as the sheer pleasure of his companionship. Ed was the
fun-loving rover of our crew. No matter how dire the circumstances,
he always had a smile and a joke, which did wonders in relieving the
tension.

It was particularly good to have with me as supply officer Lieutenant
Colonel Orval O. McMahon, whom I had first met years before in Mem-
phis. He had been a staff sergeant then and had been loaned to me for
a few weeks to set up my small supply and purchasing shop at the
airport. I had been impressed with his knowledge and soundness and
brought him into the old Ferrying Command at the first opportunity.
Here he was again.

I knew that there would be problems in ahrdrome construction, but
I also knew that if I had Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth E. Swallwell along
as director of Air Installations we'd be all right. Kenny had proved him-
self in India, where ingenuity and originality paid off. I had known
Lieutenant Colonel Manuel "Pete" Fernandez since the days of the

164 / OVER THE HUMP

Fenying Command, when he ran our one and only school for radio
mechanics and operators in Nashville. On the Hump he had served as
assistant communications ofllcer; now he was an unqualified expert in
the field and ready for the important job as my chief of communications.
Pete's parents were Cuban, and he would occasionafly slip a Spanish
word into the conversation to liven thmgs up. He seemed to be a little
older than the rest of us, but exactly how much we never knew, for
despite all our kidding questions Pete never told us his true age- In
addition to his other talents, I can flatly state that Lieutenant Colonel
Fernandez, United States Air Force, was the world's premier scroxmger.
You name it, and Pete could not only find it, but come back with it and
put it to good use.

Though he was still quite young, without the seniority required for
the job of chief of maintenance, I nevertheless wanted the Hump-proven
genius of Captain Jules A. Prevost, and I brought him along to serve as
first assistant to whomever I would select for the post. Prevost had turned
in a brilliant performance as wing maintenance officer in India, master-
ing the new, revolutionary production-line maintenance system intro-
duced by Bob White. We would definitely have some form of PLM in
Germany, and I wanted young Prevost there to make sure it worked.

Those were the officers makmg up my crew of old reliables. Most of
the other officers I took with me had come into air transport in the three
years after the war. Another young officer, one who would obviously be
a success in any operation he took on, was thirty-one-year-old Colonel
Theodore Ross Milton. Ross, a big, good-looking, heavy, slow-talkmg
fellow — at this writing a major general commanding the Thirteenth Air
Force in the Philippines — ^had last seen Germany as commander of a
group of B-17's. Just five years before he had led his group on the
Regensburg raid, the most hazardous, and, though successful, most costly
operation in the history of the United States Air Force. Now I was bring-
ing him back to help the people who had shot at him that day. Likable,
admirable, and a man of full integrity, Rqss would be my chief of staff.
He did a dependable job all the way through.

Captain Raymond Towne, a former B-26 pilot in Italy and a fine
young officer with a flair for writing and public information, went along
to be my public-information officer and editor of the newspaper I'd
already decided to have. I took First Lieutenant William G. Thompson,

The Berttn AirUft / 165

another talented young ojBBcer, to be Towne's assistant. It worked out
later that we needed the versatile Towne in operations and it was Thomp*
son who was PIO and editor.

rd run across a young captain named Robert Hogg after the war and
liked his administrative ability. He was highly educated, an intellectual
and an extrovert — a good man to have in the front office as staff secre-
tary. The name Hogg, he informed me pointedly, is pronounced "Hoag,"
and is a Scottish word meaning an unshorn lamb, a good thing to know.
When Bob had finished his tour of duty in Europe, I grabbed Mm for
my administrative officer at Westover Field, and reluctantly left hun
there when I came to Washmgton. Now, thanks to my high priority, I
got him agam, and I flew to Europe by way of Westover Field in order
to pick him up. And then I happily added Captain Harold Sims, a navi-
gator from the old Ferrying Division days, who had navigated dozens of
bombers across the South Atlantic, I would need someone with his train-
ing to do the route planning through the corridors.

When I looked around me on the plane and saw my staff of twenty
hand-picked officers, plus Miss Katie Gibson, I was really delighted.
Never had I felt so good about a staff; here was a marvelous collection
of talent. Enthusiastic and dedicated, we were, all of us, off on an enter-
prise about which we knew nothing other than that, with us on the job,
it was going to be finished promptly and properly. I did know that even
at this stage I was further along than I had been when I first took over
the Hump. For I knew that already m Germany was a large number of
aircraft crews who had learned their know-how and earned then: laurels
in the old ATC and on the Hump. A pilot who had completed a tour
on the Hump could go anywhere any pilot could go and return safely.

And I also knew the equipment Td find there. No more C-46's. We
were going to fly the best, the plane that had proved itself on the Hump,
the fine C-54 of Douglas Aircraft, structurally foolproof and a joy to
every pilot who ever flew one. These fine men and this excellent equip-
ment deserved the same practices and techniques, the same standards
of living and the proven rigidity m flying procedures and flying safety
that we had developed in India.

Even on the ffight over the Atlantic my new staff began working to-
gether, proving themselves to be all I could ask and more. None of us,
incidentally, expected to be away very long. I had told my housekeeper

166 / OVER THE HUMP

I'd be back in ninety days. I'd placed Bill, my older boy, in boarding
school, and left Joe with Red Foiman's wife Betty. I'd parked my car
by the Operations Building.

On the long trip over I outlmed to each man just exactly what his job
would be, and each man in turn began making a list of the particular
problems he had had in India in an effort to be prepared for the problems
which would arise in Germany. Before the flight was^over, we were even
writing directives there on the plane. Miss Katie filled her notebook with
shorthand.

When we arrived late m the day at Wiesbaden, I reported immediately
to General LeMay, under whose command I would be. He received me
with no sign of rancor, no grudge whatsoever. I had been ordered by
higher authority to come over and run the Airlift, and we both accepted
it at face value and let it go at that.

"I expect you to produce," he said.

"I intend to," I said.

As I had arrived after office hours, I'd found LeMay at his quarters,
a fifty-five-room mansion run by a staff of fifteen servants. It was a beau-
tiful home, exquisitely furnished with fine oriental rugs and the best of
European antiques and paintings. It belonged to the Henkell family, mak-
ers of champagne, but had been requisitioned along with eight hundred
other houses for the use of Air Force families. From this palatial resi-
dence I went to my quarters, a third-floor walk-up in the Schwartzer
Bock Hotel, overlooking a block of burned-out buildings. The door to
my single room was opened for me, and I found myself looking into the
bathroom. That was the only way you could get into the one-room quar-
ters of the commander of the Berlin Airlift— between the tub and the
commode. It was pretty obvious that I was in Germany at the command
of General Vandenberg, not at the request of anyone in Europe. Actually,
I didn't mind the poor quarters, for I was delighted with the challenge of
the Airlift. I was not happy, however, when I realized that my people
would be given even worse housing.

We were in for more of a shock next morning, when we first saw the
facilities placed at our disposal for Airlift headquarters. It was an apart-
ment house, and it had really taken a beating. The floors were covered
with debris, the walls were filthy. There were no desks, no chairs, no
telephones. We rounded up a group of German civilians to clean it up,

The Berlin Airttft / 167

put Orval McMahon on the job of securing furniture, and got Pete
Fernandez to work right away on telephones and teletypes.

We did not realize then that Airlift headquarters would become and
remain for a considerable time a small island of activity in the midst of
the lazy life of the occupation forces. Military life in occupied Germany
was not unlike life in the peacetime Army back in the twenties and
thirties. Everybody would put in his stint of a couple of hours' work in
the morning and then take off for several hours of serious activity —
scrounging. The postulate that Americans in Germany, even those en-
trusted with feeding two million people by air, would waste their time
working was simply too much for them to accept. As we were just getting
started fixing up our new headquarters that morning, a fresh-faced air-
man appeared with word from the adjutant that we coidd all come around
that afternoon to pick up our PX cards and commissary cards. It was as
though that was all we had to do. I gathered all my people around me
in the dingy third-floor room I'd chosen for my oflSce, and had a brief
litfle conference.

"Now look," I said, "we came here to work. I'm not asking you men
to put m twenty-four hours a day, but dammit, if I can do eighteen
hours a day, you can do fifteen. We didn't come to Germany to go shop-
ping at the PX or the commissary, so I think we can just skip that little
ceremony this afternoon. Inasmuch as we don't have chairs, desks, or
phones, I'll expect everyone of you to go to the air bases we will operate
from and start learning this business. As soon as you have a desk and a
chair and a telephone, I expect you right back here, working." The
speech really wasn't necessary for these dedicated, high-quality men. But
I thought I should set the record straight for the future.

And so we all went out to take a look at the Aurlitt. My first over-all
impression was that the situation was just what I had anticipated — a real
cowboy operation. Few people knew what they would be doing the next
day. Neither flight crews nor ground crews knew how long they'd be
there, or the schedules they were working. Everything was temporary.
I went out to the Wiesbaden air base, looked aroxmd, then hopped a
plane to Berlin. Confusion everywhere. Planes had been scraped up from
all over Europe. Some of the C-47's still bore the three stripes painted
on for the Normandy invasion four years before. The C-54's were com-
ing in — a squadron had come over with me the day before — ^but the old

168 / OVER THE HUMP

C-47's were stiU in the majority. Although it was obvious that we needed
more planes, it was also obvious that there would be a limit to the num-
ber we would have air space for m the corridors, ground space for in
the operating bases in West Germany. We were going to have to shoot
for a high utilization rate for each plane, rather than a large number of
planes themselves. This would be the headache of my maintenance men.

My flight to Berlin took an hour and a half; the American corridor
was the longest of the three. Beneath us the countryside was green, roll-
mg farmland. There were no isolated farmhouses, however, as in Amer-
ica, but rather clusters of houses, from which the farmers went out to
work the outlying fields, returning to the companionship of the com-
mumty when the day's work was done.

A spur of the Harz Mountains extended across our line of flight
Though just a pretty green foothill compared to the Himalayas, it never-
theless required us to climb to an altitude of five thousand feet. Coming
back later that day through the central corridor, restricted to one-way
traffic out of Berlin, I saw that the terrain beneath was perfectly low and
flat all the way, and the distance shorter. The corridor to the north was
also short, I was told, and also over flat country all the way.

Flying the circuitous route to Berlin I could see that Red Forman, my
^ef of operations, was going to have plenty of headaches. Back on the
amp, we had thuteen bases in India feeding planes into six bases in
Chma, practicany aU of Southeast Asia to maneuver in, and Uttle mter-
ference from the enemy. But here in Berlin aU planes had to land at two
airfields, Tempelhof in the American sector, and Gatow in the British
They were only four minutes apart by air, and they lay in the midst of a
checkerboard of Soviet fields. A Soviet fighter base, for example, lay
smack m the mouth of the northeastern corridor, and the British had to
veer sharply around it in order to avoid collision with Russian planes
operatmg from that field. American traffic, gomg into Tempelhof from
the south, passed within four miles of another Soviet field. In case a
plane couldn't land immediately at either airdrome, it had only a twenty-
mile circle to maneuver in, and that directly above the two fields.
Although incoming and outgoing planes were given specific altitudes,
I was told on that very first day of too many near collisions.

By nine o'clock that night aU my staff members were back, full of
observations and suggestions, and without further ado, I called a staff

The BerUn Airttft J 169

conference* Beginning the day at nine o'clock at night did not seem
unusual under the circumstances. Looking at the brief report of that first
meeting, I see a list of twelve proposals considered of sufficient impor-
tance to look into immediately.

The first, of course, had to do with maintenance. We were all agreed
that owing to the peculiar circumstances, we had to squeeze our utiliza-
tion rate per plane to the utmost. Jules Prevost reported that the current
maintenance schedule was impossible. Airplanes require constant main-
tenance, and they also require periodic maintenance at every twenty-five
hours of flight up to two hundred hours, when they undergo a major
inspection. At one thousand hours, a comprehensive overhaul must be
performed. Maintenance sections of the groups and squadrons brought
in had been crowded into existmg facilities in the first place, given the
responsibility for both routine maintenance and the major two hundred-
hour checks in the second. There was a serious shortage of tools and
spare parts in the theater, and it was just not possible to do everything
at the same time. We knew that the Air Force had maintained a major
maintenance depot at Burtonwood in England during the war, and if it
would be possible to get this depot gomg agam, we would have our two-
hundred-hour inspections performed there. In the meantime, perhaps it
would be possible to have them done at a maintenance facUity at Ober-
pfaffenhofen (referred to as "Oberhuffin' puffin'"), near Munich. As
for the one-thousand-hour inspections, they could well be performed in
in the United States.

Also in the maintenance field, we agreed at that first conference to
look into the possibility of making a more equal division of maintenance
personnel between squadrons; many were seriously undermanned. We
determined to look into the possibility of making three-to-five round
trips per airplane before maintenance.

It was obvious that improvements must be made at Tempelhof Air-
port, the major airport in Berlm. The huge operations and administration
building, built in 1935, was fantastic, with several stories underground.
During the war a whole Messerschmidt factory had been housed there,
in addition to a big, well-equipped hospital. Planes could taxi right under
the building to discarge both cargo and passengers under shelter.

Though this huge edifice had obviously been designed by architects
who were the greatest, the field itself had been designed by engineers

170 / OVER THE HUMP

who were the worst. As Kenny SwallweU pointed out, the runways dated
back to the horse-and-buggy days of aviation. Made of sod, they wouldn't
be able to stand up under normal C-47 usage, much less the poundmg
we were going to give them with the big Skymasters. The one runway in
use consisted of steel landing mats laid on a base of rubble. This had
ahready begun to go to pieces, and an ingenious but wild method of mam-
tenance had been devised. A force of a couple of hundred men equipped
with new landing mats, sand, and asphalt, lined the runways. As soon
as a plane foared by, they'd jump out and make what repairs they could,
jump back out of the way when the next plane came by.

"We've got to have two additional runways there," SwallweU said
flatly. "We need another to handle the additional traffic I know damn'
well from past experience you're going to have, and we need a third to
be used when we dose down either of the others for repair."

Use of the Gatow Airport in co-operation with the British led to an-
other Ime of thought. We had aU noted that the American corridor, from
Wiesbaden and Rhine-Main into Tempelhof, was half again as long as
the other two corridors. Simple arithmetic showed that we would be able
to get a higher rate of utilization out of our planes by using the two
shorter corridors, in one and out the other. The tonnage that required a
one-and-a-half hour trip from Rhine-Main required only a one-hour trip
from the RAF bases at Fassberg and Celle; thus two planes based at
Fassberg could do the work of three based at Rhme-Mam. As I have
akeady noted, the two northern routes lay over low and level country.
We could come in on the deck if we wanted to.

It would thus be decidedly to our advantage to use the two northern
routes, both of which led to the British zone. But how would this fit in
with the British operations? A high degree of co-operation would cer-
tamly be necessary. Would it be possible to place all the planes flying
the Berlm Airlift under one command? This was another point to explore.

On my trip to Berlin I had strolled around at Tempelhof, observing
the planes being unloaded, the pilots checking in with Operations, and
things in general. There was a lot of milling around. In the Operations
room I'd seen a dozen pilots and copilots crowding around the Opera-
tions desk, waiting for clearance. From there I'd followed the crowd into
an adjoining room, a kind'of snack bar. Here more crew members were
drinking coffee, munching on doughnuts, smoking, talking, and laughing.

The BerUn Airlift / 171

rd seen a couple of planes being unloaded swiftly and efficiently by
sweat-drenched German civilians, and I knew that that phase of the turn-
around activity was being well taken care of. The Germans were per-
sonally involved; they had their own well-bemg and freedom at stake,
and they were working like beavers. But the way the crews were loung-
ing around in the Operations room and the snack bar, I wondered how
in the world they'd get their planes off on time. Well, a look at the records
showed they were not getting off on time. There were frequent delays.
The schedule was ragged.

There was a good, clear-cut solution to this problem: On the thirty-
first of My, the third day on the job, I put out an order to the effect
that no crew member would leave the site of his airplane at Tempelhof
and Gatow. The order created no end of consternation and griping when
it first came out, but the bellyachmg diminished quickly with each crew's
first trip to Berlin. For m the meantime we had made hasty preparations.
Even as an incoming pilot was cutting off his engines after taxiing to the
unloading ramp, a big truck with an unloadmg crew aboard was backmg
up to the cargo door to transfer the load. As the pilot got down from
the plane, an Operations officer roared up in a jeep and handed him his
clearance slip. If there was anything at all the pilot should know — an
accident at the other end of the corridor, for example — ^the Operations
officer passed along this information with the clearance slip. Then the
weather officer came up in his jeep, to give the pilot the latest word in
that department But the piice de resistance was yet to come. The third
jeep to arrive was fitted out like a snack bar, liberally stocked with such
items as hot coffee, hot dogs and doughnuts, and equipped with a canopy
that could be extended in case of rain.

That wasn't all. We had approached the German Red Cross and asked
for their co-operation, and we certainly did receive it. They had picked
out some of the most beautiful girls in Berlin to ride along in the mobile
snack bar and dish out the goodies along with enticing smiles. There
were no more moans from the crews about staying by the plane. You
couldn't chase them away.

The system clicked efficiently from the very first. Thanks to it, the
second the plane was unloaded, the pilot was in his seat, ready to go.
And the turn-around time came down to thirty minutes flat.

But of course it was first necessary to get the plane from the air base

172 / OVER THE HUMP

in West Germany to Berlin, so let us begin at the beginning. The average
person unfamiliar with air traffic would probably assume that a plane
would take off from Rhine-Main air base, say, proceed to the beacon
at Fulda, which marked the entrance to the corridor, then fly up the
corridor to Tempelhof, circle, and land. ActuaDy our procedures were
far more complicated than that.

On that Black Friday I was taught forcefuUy that weather in northern
Europe could be fickle indeed. The sun could be shining brightly at one
terminal while it was raining heavily at the other, or it could be clear at
both ends of the line but bad in the middle, particularly over the Harz
Mountains near Fulda. What we needed on this run was one standard
and constant set of ffight rules to govern aU planes at aU times. The
choice between visual ffight rules and instrument ffight rules was not a
difficult one to make: You can fly by instruments in clear weather, but
you sure can't fly by visual rules in the North German fog. I thus decided
that aU planes under my command would fly a never-changing ffight
pattern by instrument rules at aU times, good weather or bad, night or
day.

Another new rule I put in was more unconventional, to say the least.
It caused a great deal of comment, particularly among air-traffic experts
who had never heard of such a thing before. Frankly, I thought of it on
the spur of the moment, while circling over Berlin, worrying about the
increasing pile-up of incoming planes. It was simply this: If a pilot should
happen to miss his landing for any reason whatsoever, he would continue
straight out on course and return the two hundred to four hundred miles
to his home base.

These two rules were included in the instructions I gave Stu Bettinger
and Red Forman on Black Friday. They would comprise the nucleus for
the new procedures I expected my two experts to come up with. Instruc-
tions given, I hitched a ride on another plane going back to Wiesbaden
that night, leaving Forman and Bettinger to wresfle with the problem.

The procedures they worked out were as uncomplicated as was pos-
sible under the circumstances. Let's take a plane from the Wiesbaden
air base, which is farther from Berlin than the other American base,
Rhine-Main. There were normally about three times as many planes
based at Rhine-Main, so it was given the master control of traffic from
the two bases. There was only one corridor available to us from the

The BerUn AirUft / 173

American Zone, remember. Thus planes were dispatched at regular mter-
vals from Rhme-Main as a matter of course. When Wiesbaden had a
plane ready to go, it would contact the master control and be given
priority for take-ofi.

Just prior to take-off, the pilot was ^ven the numbers of the three
planes ahead of him and the two which would take off after him. He
took off at a specific second— the exact time was given frequently for
synchronization — and proceeded to follow a climbing, circuitous route
over radio beacons placed for that specific purpose. Not only were two
au: bases feeding planes into the southern corridor, but planes were re-
turning to both of these bases along separate flight plans from the central
corridor. The path had to be exact.

At the exact moment the pilot crossed the Fulda range station at the
entrance to the corridor, he broadcast in the clear the number of his
plane. This was extremely important. Pilots of the planes ahead and
behind him could thus check their watches and tell exactly the intervals
between planes. From there on it was a straight flight up tiie corridor,
chugging along at 170 miles per hour. (Though the normal cruising
speed of the C-54 is 200 miles per hour, we held it down on the Berlin
Airlift to first 180 miles per hour, then 170, because of the heavy loads
we carried.) Over Berlin the pilot turned left at a beacon a few miles
on the right side of Tempelhof, proceeded directly across the airport at
right angles to the runway, and started makmg his descent. He made
three right turns, flying a box flight pattern, simultaneously lowering
down to fifteen hundred feet. He would now be lined up with the run-
way and would come m at 120 miles per hour, lowering slowly until
he was at four himdred feet. If the ceiling was over four hundred feet
and visibility a mile or better, he would come in. If the ceiling was less
than four hundred feet, visibility less than a mile, he would simply shove
forward his throttles, breathe a sigh of regret at missing the hot coffee
and doughnuts and pretty girls in the Red Cross truck, and proceed for
home base. I stated publicly that I would reduce to copilot status any
pilot who failed to land with ceiling and visibility greater than four hun-
dred feet and a mile, and that I would court-martial any pilot who did
l^d with ceiling and visibility less than four hundred feet and one mile.
I never did court-martial any pilot or reduce anyone to copilot status
on these counts — I never had any intention of doing so in the first place

174 / OVER THE HUMP

— ^but the message got across. Sometimes, I'm sure, this failure to land
must have been a little embarrassing, particularly when the pilot's home
base had become socked in and he had to fly on to an alternate base,
landing at Vienna, say, or even Marseille on the sunny Mediterranean,
with a load of coal for Berlin.

Later the limits at Gatow were reduced to a two-hundred-foot ceiling
and one-half mile visibility, but remained the same at Tempelhof due
to the short runways and high apartment houses on the approach to the
field. A landmg at Tempelhof was always somethmg to contend with.

There were many additional and intricate features in the exact route
procedures worked out by the Bettinger-Forman team. Speeds of climb
had to be carefully determined, for example, as well as speeds of cruise
and descent. We foimd it necessary to pace each aircraft with a fighter
plane equipped with specially calibrated instruments in order to check
the air-speed indicator. In the beginning we flew our aircraft at five dif-
ferent altitudes, at intervals of five hundred feet, from five thousand to
seven thousand feet, in order to keep them adequately separated. As we
grew more confident about our timing, the number of altitudes was
reduced to three and finally to two.

From the very beginning we operated on a three-minute interval be-
tween take-offs. Even though we did not have enough planes on hand
to maintain a round-the-clock schedule of three-minute take-offs, I never-
theless insisted upon scheduling them for periods of several hours at a
time. Thus, should we ever have the equipment and the personnel to
operate on that schedule around the clock, we'd be prepared for it.

Why the emphasis on three minutes? Because it provided an ideal
cadence of operations with the control equipment available at that time.
There are 1,440 mmutes in a day. At three-minute intervals, this meant
480 landings at, say, Tempelhof, in a twenty-four-hour period. The
planes that came in had to go out agam, of course, and with the take-off
interval also set at three minutes, this meant that a plane either landed
or took off every 90 seconds. There was little time wasted sitting at the
ends of the runways.

It is this beat, this precise rhythmical cadence, which determines the
success of an airlift. This steady rhythm, constant as the jungle drums,
became the trade-mark of the Berlin Airlift, or any airlift I have operated.
I don't have much of a natural sense of rhythm, incidentally; I'm cer-

The Berlin AirUft / 175

tainly no threat to Fred Astaire, and a drumstick to me is something that
grows on a chicken. But when it comes to airlifts, I want rhythm.

And regimentation. I insisted on complete regimentation in every
aspect of flying for every pilot, copilot, and radio operator. There was
only one best technique for each flymg maneuver — ^take-oflf, climb out,
cruise, descent, and landing. No variations. I wanted no experimentmg
on anyone's part.

The complete operating procedure on the Berlin Airlift, particularly
the two drastic innovations of flying continuously on mstrument flight
rules and of returning to base after one pass at Ae field, caused much
excited interest in both civilian and military aviation circles. The Civil
Aeronautics Authority sent a team to investigate our procedures, and
Bettinger spent several days demonstrating and explaining them. Some
years later, when General James Doolittle was named head of a com-
mittee to investigate the whole problem of ak traflBc following the crash
of a plane in the residential district of Elizabeth, New Jersey, Bettinger
testified before the committee at some length. Many of us believe that
both of these iianpvations bom on the Berlin Anlif t have a definite place
in ah: transport today, both civilian and military.

After this new system had been m effect for several days, long enough
for the pilots to become familiar with it, I set about getting their reac-
tions. I didn't want to get this information from squadron commanders
or group commanders, men who might conceivably be influenced by
what they thou^t I would wish to hear, but dkectly from the lips of
the men who were flying the route themselves, day in, day out. So I took
over the meeting room in the Schwartzer Bock Hotel and arranged to
have a keg of good German beer and some cold cuts on hand. I sent
out invitations to a group of about thirty pilots to come share the beer
with me and some of my operating staff. After a stein or two, I threw
out a question, and there was no hesitancy in answering it— everybody
started talking at once.

"O.K.," I said, "let's begin at the beginning and take it up from
warm-up to take-off and then beacon by beacon."

The big gripe dealt primarily with flight procedures, and specifically
with the number and location of beacons. When passing over a beacon
in the climb out and making the sharp turn required, the pilots had the
imcomfortable feelmg that another plane might climb up their backs or

176 / OVER THE HUMP

turn into them on a bend in the course. More bea(X)ns were needed. Too,
they insisted, climbing speeds for all pilots had to be rigidly enforced by
Operations, and flying-safety lectures continuously given to all crews as
well as more frequent check flights for all crews to insure standardiza-
tion. What they said made sense, and I looked over at Pete Fernandez,
our communications officer, to make sure he was taking it all in. He was
taking it all down. Pete had the new beacons the pilots demanded in
place in forty-eight hours. This was a job that would usually take months,
but Pete was a fantastic operator.

There were other complaints about living conditions— food, mess
halls, crowded barracks. People were constantly coming and going all
the time, the pilots said, making it hard to sleep even when dead-tired.
The bull session went on for hours, from 10 a,m. until after seven that
nig^t. FinaUy a young lieutenant made what many considered the most
intelligent suggestion of the day. "How about getting the Red Cross or
somebody to send over a couple of hundred beautiful American gkls?"

"We don*t have enough housing as it is," Kenny Swallwell, my engi-
neering officer, said seriously. "Where would they sleep?"

They all answered at once, and that was the end of the meeting. It
served its purpose well. In addition to making the operational changes,
we set about immediately doing all we could to improve living conditions.
This was not easy. The Berlin Airlift was not like the Hump, which grew
gradually. Here we had a great mass of planes, crews, personnel of all
kinds, pulling in suddenly from all over. Nor did we have our own hous-
nig. We were a task force with one job to do; the occupation forces were
supposed to supply us all our needs. But we did get them to requisition
some private buildings in both Frankfurt and Wiesbaden for Operation
Vitties personnel The barracks being used by the occupation troops
were already full except for the unfinished attics, which were bare beams
supporting the ceilmgs below. We had them floored over and thus at least
got some attic room. But despite the requisitioned buildings and re-
modeled attics most of my men had to resign themselves to living in tents
or in hastily constructed quonset huts for several months. I passed the
word down to housing officers to do their very best to put crews working
on the same schedules together, so that they could all sleep at the same
time. I put pressure on the mess officers to improve the food.

I made constant loimds. I was available to everyone — dozens of times

The BerUn AirUft / 177

I've heard my name called by some fresh-faced Ueutenant and waited
for him as he came panting up to give me information, make a com-
plaint, or ask advice. I think one young man intended to give me a good
chewing out, but I talked my way out of it. He charged up to me at
Tempelhof.

"General," he demanded, "do you know what was in that plane I just
flew into Berlm? Wine, that's what. Wine for these Frenchmen. Do you
realize that I risked my life to bring in a planeload of wine?"

He made it sound like arsenic. I explained to him gently and in some
detail, because I felt his concern deserved an adequate explanation, that
to the French wme was an essential part of the meal. And anyway, I
went on, these allotments were handed down to us by higher authority,
and we should be good soldiers and carry them out without complain-
ing. The combination answer seemed to satisfy him.

Making myself available to the pilots and crew members, seeking them
out and listening to their complaints, gave me an insight into the true
operations of the lift that I could never have gotten sitting at my desk
reading filtered and secondhand reports. Frequently I learned of an acci-
dent before the commander of the base on which it had occurred. The
opportunity to report to hun what was going on at his own base was
extremely valuable, especially when I dragged him out of bed to do so.
It tended to shake him up and keep him on his toes.

For my meanderings were by no means restricted to the daytune. I
would purposely pick late at night or the very early morning hours to
check up on what I considered important or vital activities. It wasn't
unusual for a sleepy tower operator to suddenly realize that I was stand-
ing there with him. Sometimes there would be no conversation other than
a greeting or a good night; there wasn't much need for words when
things were going properly. The word got around that the General had
been there during the small hours. It was a twenty-four-hour operation
every day, and I wanted everyone m the Airlift to remember that. The
men I talked with knew, too, that I was still a long way from my bed.

Sometimes, after my flight jacket picked up some coal dust and the
stars on my shoulders were not so readily distinguishable, I'd be prac-
tically incognito, just another GI in Germany. Reporters loved to pick
up littie items such as the time a pilot who was giving me a lift into
Berlin shouted at me to shake a leg and get a move on. I didn't mind

178 / OVER THE HUMP

a bit, for I learned a lot about my command from pilots who thought
they were talking to just another airplane driver.

And sometimes my conversations with pilots out in the field brought
strange twists. On one occasion m Berlin, late at night, I strolled out to
the ramp to have a cup of coffee with the pilot of a C-54 just coming in
with a load of coal. He was tired and dirty and looked more like a coal
miner than an Air Force pilot. He was, he said, completing his 210th
trip; he*d delivered over two thousand tons of coal. No wonder he looked
tured. But as he drank his coffee, he seemed to relax, and he looked at
me and smiled.

"You know, General," he said, "there's one thing we can be thankful
for in hauling all this coal to Berlin."

"Yes?" I said. "Whaf s that?"

"At least we don't have to haul out the ashes."

For the first weeks, even months, of the Airlift, the recognition of its
importance kept the men going. But eventually the first great burst of
enthusiasm began to fade. We were settling down for the long haul, and
resentment was beginning to set in. At the start the Airlift had been con-
sidered no more than a delaying action, to continue only a few weeks.
Personnel, both individuals and whole units, had been assigned to
USAFE for nmety days, even in some cases thirty days, temporary duty.
Units had come in from Texas, from Panama, from Alaska. The squad-
ron of C-S4's from Anchorage had bright-red markings so they could
be easily distinguished if forced down m the snow. The night before
their take-off from Alaska they had been having a squadron party, an
annual organization-day affair, with the Berlm Airlift far away in an-
other world and hardly a thought of it in anyone's mind, when the
0£Gicer of the Day burst into the festivities, shaking a radiogram as
though it were a hot potato, and handed it to the commander. It came
from Washington, and it said that the squadron would leave Anchorage
in the morning for Berlm Airlift duty — ^no prior warning. The party
ended, and husbands and wives hurried home to pack — ^the husbands for
the flight to Berlin, the wives and children for the trip back home to
mother.

One troop-carrying group had just arrived at its new station at Hickam
Field, Hawaii, when the order came through to proceed immediately to
Germany. At that moment the wives and children were on board ship

The Berlin AirUft / 179

proceeding to Hawaii from San Francisco. The next day they looked up
and saw the entire group flying over their heads, en route back to the
United States and Germany. It was three days before the wives arrived
in Honolulu, the place their husbands had left. No one could tell them
how long the group would be in Germany, or even if it was coming back
to Hawaii.

Similar situations existed at all the other bases from which units had
been transferred. Even to military personnel and their dependents, used
to uncertainty, this situation was extreme, and it got worse. In the cases
of practically every man, the TDY was extended another thirty days,
and another, and another. To some wives and sweethearts this was the
bitter end, for the "Dear John" letters began to arrive.

As I got around, visiting all the bases, flying in and out of Berlin
regularly, I heard the complaints and bellyaching from all my people,
both flight crews and ground personnel. What they wanted most I could
not give them, for I was on TDY myself and had no idea when it would
end. All I could do was to keep hammering away on higher headquarters
to provide all the necessities and comforts of military life that were pos-
sible. Some of my base commanders thought I was going a little far when
I proposed curtains for barracks windows, but I insisted. We were flying
day and night. If a pilot had flown three round trips to Berlm the night
before and was going to fly three more the next night, he deserved some-
thing to keep the sun out of his eyes.

The situation cried out more and more for a newspaper, both to give
a little lift in morale and to keep the men apprised of what was going on.
We'd discussed it on the way over. I wanted to get that same feeling of
competition that we had had back on the Hump. Just as on the Hump
we rarely saw a Japanese, so, in Germany, we rarely saw a Russian. We
had no enemy to keep us on our toes, and although the men knew that
the cargo we were flying into Berlin kept the city alive, it was hard to
keep this fact constantly uppermost in everyone's mind, particularly if
he never got within a hundred miles of Berlin. The solution was to set
up competition between the units flying the lift. Give Americans good
healthy competition and they can accomplish just about anything. One
way to do this was to set up a daily quota for each unit, announce it
in advance, then report at the end of the twenty-four-hour period how
each unit had done in comparison with all the others. One way of gettmg

180 / OVER THE HUMP

the quota to the men was by postmg it on the howgozit boards; another
was to announce it each day in the daily newspaper. And so was bom the
Task Force Times, Bill Thompson, editor.

Thompson and his staS had complete editorial freedom. His one
standing order was to leave my name out of the paper. This was to be
no pulf sheet for the commander, but a sprightly, newsy paper that
would enjoy the widest possible readership. We were lucky m finding a
crackerjack cartoonist, Technical Sergeant John Schuffert, who had an
extraordinary knack in giving his readers just what they wanted to see.
His cartoons were raw and bitter and played up everything disagreeable
on the Airlift, but they brought a smile to their readers' faces, and they
added greatly to the popularity of the Task Force Times. Schuffert had
carte blanche; I was the only person who could censor him, and I did
only on a couple of occasions when the latrine-type humor he liked was
a little too raw. He particularly loved to pick on one of my base com-
manders. After one especially deflating cartoon the base commander
went to the foolish extreme of banning the paper from the base. I coun-
termanded the order. Schuffert drove USAFE headquarters crazy. I was
constantly fighting for him.

Another battle which I fought all the way to the top was over the open
publication of tonnage entering Berlin. Security officers wanted the fig-
ures kept secret; I not only wanted them unclassified, I wanted to pub-
licize them, shout them from the housetops. I had many reasons. One
was that we couldn't keep the figures secret in the first place. A heavily
loaded four-engine plane is not something you can smuggle into a city.
We knew that the Soviets had agents stationed at vantage points over-
looking the fields. They could both hear and observe the planes come
m. We were under close scrutiny at all times.

If the Berlin Airlift was to be successful — and I never had any doubts
but that it would be — ^then it would be more than just an airlift. It would
be a propaganda weapon held up before the whole world. We should
not hide it. And finally, knowing my men, I wanted to be able to give
them the exact tonnage figures of each squadron to inspire them to do
better. Why, this was one of my tools. Total tonnage figures for the past
twenty-four-hour period came out at noon each day. These figures would
be rushed into print and the paper sent on its way. Distribution was easy;
all planes went into Berlin, and all planes returned to their bases. The

The Bertin Airtift / 181

papers were put on the first avaUable plane out of Wiesbaden base, and
picked up in Berlin by the first planes leaving for the other bases.

The chief topic of conversation on every base was the daily tonnage
records. Visitors to the Airlift were amazed by the spirit of competition.
Richard Malkm, editor of Air Transportation, told of entering the Opera-
tions room at an air base to hear an officer shouting angrily into the
phone.

"What's he yelling about?" I asked the sergeant at my elbow.

"Figures," he replied wearily. "Everybody's tonnage-whacky.
He's claiming the tonnage high for the day. Somebody in Wiesbaden
gave it to the 313th or some other group. You'd think this was the
Kentuclqr Derby."

But the louder the personnel screamed over the constant competition,
the better I liked it. The intense rivalry even spread to the loading and
unloading gangs, composed of displaced persons from the Baltic coun-
tries and German civilians. We encouraged enthusiasm with prizes —
usually cigarettes, worth their weight in gold — ^for outstanding perform-
ances. One twelve-man German loading crew stowed away twenty
thousand pounds of coal in five minutes and forty-five seconds, and
were rewarded with a whole pack of cigarettes per man — a fortune!

When I arrived in Germany, the hard-and-fast regulations against
fraternization made it difficult to use Germans except in the most menial
capacity. As our maintenance problems multiplied, however, we began
to consider more and more seriously the possibility of using German
mechanics. These problems were serious to begin with, but as our in-
creased efficiency brought about a higher utilization rate of planes,
additional maintenance was required. Graduafiy, on the American side
of the Airlift, we were replacing the C-47's with the bigger C-54's. It
is an even greater testimonial to the sturdy Skymaster to point out that
it was never intended as a cargo carrier in the first place. It was origi-
nally designed, fifteen years before, as a passenger airliner for long-
distance runs. On the Airlift we were using it for a purpose exactly oppo-
site that for which it was planned — ^transporting heavy cargo short dis-
tances. Loading the plane to its maximum, often overloading it, meant
that the engines had ta work harder to reach altitude. The greater pro-
portions of take-offs and landings, in relation to flying time, placed a

182 / OVER THE HUMP

heavier strain on its landing gear, and wore out tires and brakes. Eighty
per cent of the total tonnage taken into Berlin was coal, and though
we constantly improved packaging, going from GI duffel bags to bags
made of several thicknesses of paper, the gritty, abrasive particles of
coal dust still managed to creep into every portion of the plane.

Under such conditions, there was no wonder that we quickly ex-
hausted the theater supply of replacement parts. The supply of wind-
shield wipers, estimated to be enough to last for six months, went in
two weeks. On the day I took over, I found a desperate shortage of
tires; replacements had to be rushed by ah: from the United States. The
shortage of engines became so acute that we actually foresaw curtailing
operations, but then several hundred of an earlier model were dis-
covered in depots in the United States. The older engines produced
less horsepower, which gave the pilot somethmg to think about when
he had both models on one plane, but they served the purpose.

But of all our shortages, that of trained man power was perhaps the
most acute. All our units were under strength. In addition, the shortage
of adequate equipment, from heavy cranes on down to such basic items
as screw drivers, curtailed the work output per man.

The idea of augmenting our mamtenance forces with German me-
chanics followed naturally. For years the world had heard about the great
Luftwaffe; surely the German Air Force had had mechanics. Now we
needed them to help us help thek fellow citizens in Berlin.

The first stumbling block was the nonfratemization regulation; we
could knock ourselves out feeding the Germans, but we coxildn't see
them socially or employ them in any but menial capacities. Permission
to use Germans as aircraft technicians could come only from General
Qay himself. This presented an interesting problem, for not only could
I not talk to the Germans, I couldn't talk to my fellow American,
General Clay. When I had first arrived in Germany, I had requested
permission from General LeMay to present my respects to General
Clay, and permission had been granted for this one occasion. In my
letter of instruction from General LeMay, it was specifically pointed
out whom I could "co-ordinate with," a military phrase meanmg "talk
to," and General Clay was one of those omitted. My organization was
in close contact with his on an around-the-clock basis, of course, and
my people could talk to his people. But I could not talk to him— offi-

The Berlin AirUft / 183

daily. My channel was to USAFE, where my "Hump" ideas were not
always understood. Fortunately, one day when I was routmely checking
turn-around problems at Tempelhof , General Clay came to the airdrome
to take off on one of his frequent visits to the free zone. He saw me,
came over, and asked, "Any problems, Tunner?"

I told him I certainly did have a problem — ^there weren't enough
good mamtenance men to go around. "But I think I can whip it," I said,
"if you will allow me to hire some skilled German mechanics."

"Go ahead and do it," he said. "Tell Curt I said it's O.K."

That was all I needed. I reported the conversation to the USAFE
personnel department, which could hardly fail to approve the plan, and
then turned the matter over to my own personnel people. I suggested
they find a former German Air Force maintenance officer who would,
m turn, be able to locate mechanics for us. They came up with a Major
General, no less — ^Major General Hans Detlev von Rohden. He had
served in air transport during the war and was fully conversant with our
problems, as well as with the English language. I told hun what I wanted,
and he delivered. Almost overnight excellent German mechanics began
flowing in. Now we had only two problems to overcome: the language
barrier, and the unfamiliarity on the part of the Germans with our big
C-54's. Von Rohden organized a translation section to put our trainmg
manuals into German as the first step in an extensive training program.
In the meantime, we assigned maintenance personnel who could speak
German to serve as supervisors. As German civilians acquired experi-
ence, those who could speak English were able to step into key positions,
thus reducing the load on the German-speaking maintenance officers.
The German mechanics proved to be so capable that eventually eighty-
five of them were assigned to each squadron. We had more German
mechanics than American!

In the preliminary discussions with von Rohden, we naturally dis-
cussed the most-publicized German airlift, the attempt to supply the
German Army cut off by the Russians at Stalingrad. Von Rohden, who
had been there, said that General von Paulus, commander of the German
Army at Stalingrad, had flown to Berlin at Hitler's command and
attended a large conference at which Marshal Hermann Goering was
also present. Goering assured Hitler and von Paulus that his Air Force
would solve the logistics problem by airlifting daily three hundred tons

184 / OVER THE HUMP

of cargo required for the encircled German troops. However, even
that modest figure was never attained at Stalingrad. Why not? Curious,
I questioned von Rohden in detail, and I believe that I have? an answer
why the Stalingrad airlift failed It was not through lack of equipment,
but rather because there was too much of it Between four hundred and
five hundred planes were brought in to handle the job, too many for
the size of the mission. They crowded the fields and confused the
meager maintenance facilities. Many of the planes were flown in from
the desert campaign in North Africa. They were not wmterized, and
the oil and hydraulic fluids congealed, making struts and other mecha-
nisms inoperable and compounding the mechanical problems. Many
of the crews brought up from Africa, von Rohden said, had nothmg to
wear but summer clothes there in the Russian winter.

Even more transport aircraft had then been hastily summoned from
Norway and France and other bases. But the combmation of lack of
know-how, lack of maintenance facilities, and inadequate winterization
of too many planes was too much. It was this, rather than Russian
action, which hampered the airlift operations. Three hundred planes
were lost, and only a scant ninety tons a day delivered, when the com-
paratively small total of three hundred tons was required and had been
promised. And thus the Russians were able to kill or capture von
Paulus' army of 290,000 men. History will look at Stalingrad as one
of the decisive battles of the ages. An airlift had failed.

Perhaps the failure of the German aurlift at Stalingrad was one of the
factors in the early Russian reaction to the American-British Airlift into
Berlin. The Russians had never had an airlift themselves, and they
didn't take ours seriously until it was too late. I have another personal
opinion on this. The Russians did not understand instrument flying
themselves and therefore did not beUeve that we could maintain the
Airlift during the long European winter. Frequently a cloud cover ex-
tending from five hundred feet on up to five thousand feet would cover
the entire region. A whole procession of American planes would be
flying along in bright sunlight above the clouds, but never once on such
days did I see a Russian plane up there with us. The Russians were
good pilots, capable of all kinds of stunts, and they flew in the lousiest
weather conceivable — but always beneath the clouds, never on instru-
ments. I am convinced that the Russian unfamiliarity with instrument

The Berlin Airtift / 185

flying led them to take our airlift too lightly at the boginning. They did
not think we could do it.

Later, after it was apparent that the Airlift was effective, the Rus-
sians resorted to many silly and childish stunts in their efforts to harass
us. Their first action was to announce that on the morrow they would
be flymg in formation over Berlin and East Germany, including the
corridors. I protested through channels, as well as to the Four-Power
Air Safety Center in Berlin, but I was convinced all along that the
Russians were bluffing. I put out orders to all pUots to continue boring
ahead and not to pay any attention to the Russians if they did show
up. The threatened formation never developed.

As time went on, the Russians harassed us in other ways. On oc-
casion they staged anti-aircraft practice, with a plane towing a target
for the guns below to shoot at. Sometimes the shells burst in the cor-
ridor. They were seen by the pilots and were sometimes close, but they
were never more than a morale threat. On some occasions, as our
planes lumbered up the corridor, a Russian jet would zoom out of
nowhere towing a sleeve target, with another fighter zipping along
pouring machine-gun bullets into it Sometimes Russian pilots buzzed
us as we proceeded up the corridors. If s a helpless feeling when, as
you're grinding along in a cargo plane, a MIG suddenly screams down
out of nowhere to miss you by a few feet, but there was nothing we
could do but sit there and feel helpless. All I could do was to repeat
my mstructions to all pilots to fly on. They did, and it finally reached
the pomt where we were all able to laugh at these attempts to intimi-
date us.

The Russians performed particularly childish tricks at the Gatow
field, where the Russian Zone comes ri^t up to the end of the runway.
One night they moved powerful searchlights mto position and began
flashing them into the eyes of pilots taking off. Take-offs continued, and
no damage was done, but it was extremely annoying. Of far greater
concern to us was the rumor passed on through German civilians of
plans to secrete time bombs in the sacks of coal. Fortunately none
ever were.

Of all Communist hostile acts, perhaps the most damaging was thek
poison-pen campaign. Mysterious letters would come to our pilots,
letters mailed both in Germany and m the United States, reporting the

186 / OVER THE HUMP

infidelity of wives or sweethearts. Some degree of bitterness already
existed between many couples over the extended periods of temporary
duty, and even to those husbands who normally shared a firm mutual
trust with their wives the letters could cause nagging doubts and a re-
sulting drop in morale.

Far more successful than the Russians in hamstringing the Berlin
Airlift were the same old bugaboos I had experienced in India — divided
conmiand for one, and conflict between senior officers dedicated to the
technical and strategic functions of the Air Force and those of us who
had built up some expertise in air transport.

Early in the Airlift it had become obvious that it would function
much more smoothly and efficiently if the British and American opera-
tions were combined. There were several good reasons for this. Con-
solidation of scheduled flights into and out of Berlin would certainly
be safer and smoother than maintaining two separate operations side
by side. As I have pointed out previously, bases in the British zone
were geographically superior to ours. Two planes based at Fassberg, for
example, could do the work of three based at Wiesbaden. Our study
of climatology in Germany over the past fifty years clearly indicated
better weather in the north. Further, between the British bases and
Berlin the country was as flat as a football field; from American bases
we had to cross over moxmtains.

The increased utilization of the two northern corridors simply made
sense. I had first sent a group of C-54's to Fassberg in early August.
As we based more and more Skymasters at these British bases, a com-
bined operation should produce smoother administration. I proposed
this to General LeMay, and he readily saw the advantages. He agreed
to take up the matter with his British counterpart, Air Marshal Sir
Arthur P. M. Saunders, commander in chief of the British Air Forces
of Occupation (BAFO).

LeMay and I flew up to Sir Arthxir's headquarters at Biickeburg to
propose setting up the combined operation. Saunders agreed immedi-
ately in principle, but a difference of opinion soon developed over the
extent of the integration of the two forces. The USAFE position was
that American and British forces be combined in one task force,
with one headquarters and one commander, who would have complete
control over the entire operation. The BAFO position was that a co-

The BerUn AirUft / 187

ordinating committee should be created and all questions of traffic con-
trol be referred to this committee for action. The British were well
aware that, should one commander be named to command an entire
operation, that commander would be an American. America was making
eighty per cent of the contribution, and it was only common sense that
an American should head it up. LeMay and I could understand the
British opposition, but we saw little point in trying to run the Airlift
through a co-ordinating committee.

We held conference after conference. Sir Arthur, erudite and urbane,
spoke eloquently and at length on the British position, offering alternate
proposals and well-thought-out compromises. LeMay just sat there,
puffing on his cigar and not giving an inch. He had made up his mind
what he wanted before the conferences even began, and he was adamant
from beginning to end. Saunders might as well have been talking to
his cigar. The final agreement was reached on October 14, one day
before LeMay was to leave Europe to become commander of the
Strategic Air Command. He and Sir Arthur signed a lengthy directive
setting up the Combined Airlift Task Force (CALTF). The nub of the
directive was given in paragraph 2, which read as follows:

2. The purpose of this organization is to merge the heretofore
coordmated, but independent, USAF-RAF airlift efforts in order
that the resources of each participating service may be utilized in
the most advantageous manner. Its primary mission is to deliver to
Berlin, in a safe and efficient manner, the maximum tonnage pos-
sible, consistent with combmed resources of equipment and person-
nel available.

In addition to merging American and British Airlift efforts, this para-
graph brought about a new and important change in the over-all con-
cept. Heretofore the Airlift had been assigned a minimum amount of
cargo. From now on, we were to get all the tonnage we could mto the
blockaded city. The sky was the limit. This woxild change the emphasis
from utilization of planes to tonnage, from a daily quota to unlimited
quotas. Thus, when there was unforseen congestion in the corridors on
the Berlin airfields and some part of the operation had to slow down, an
American C-54, with its ten tons of cargo, took precedence over an RAF
Dakota, with three tons.

188 / OVER THE HUMP

Under the terms of the directive, I was designated commander, of
CALTF, with Air Commodore J. W, F. Merer of the RAF, a fine, dedi-
cated oj£cer, as deputy coromander. Merer also continued in command
of the RAFs operation Plane Fare.

At the same time the Air Ministry in London replaced Air Marshal
Saunders with Air Marshal Williams, a big, florid, easygoing and most
likable South African. I now had two bosses, one American and one
British.

Setting up CALTF was one of LeMay's last actions as commander
of USAFE. After three and a half months of responsibility for the LeMay
Coal and Feed Service, he had reason to consider the merger a wise
move. He also felt that in delegating both the responsibility and the
headaches to Merer and me, both of whom had extensive experience in
air transport, he was performing a valuable service for his successor, who
did not.

As we parted on our return to Wiesbaden, the creation of CALTF
now a fait accompli, I shook hands with LeMay and wished hun God-
speed on his new mission.

•Thanks, Bill," he said in his terse way. "You're doing a good job
anyway, but this agreement's going to help."

This was great praise coming from the taciturn LeMay. I was still
basking m it the next day when I followed the time-honored Air Force
custom of going out to the field to see the departing commander off.
His successor, Lieutenant General John K. Cannon, was also in the
party. We shook hands with LeMay as he boarded his plane, and then
stepped back to witness the rest of the traditional ceremony of departure.

I had been looking forward eagerly to renewing my acquaintanceship
with General Joe Cannon. My respect for hhn dated from my student
days at KeUy Field, when he was the final check pilot for the fighter
students. I never flew with him, as my training was in bombers, but I
heard plenty about him from those who did. He was considered tough
but fair, just like his counterpart, Qair Chennault. I did not think at
all then, mcidentally, of the coincidence in which I served in a similar
capacity under those two men in the two most important missions of my
career. K I had remembered my experiences with General Chennault,
perhaps I would have proceeded a little more cautiously the morning of
October 17, when I was scheduled for my first formal appointment with

The BerUn Airlift / 189

Cannon to brief him on the operations of the Berlin Airlift. As it was,
I was totally unprepared for the reception I received. For as I strode into
his oflSce, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and eager to talk about the
Airlift, I wais rocked back on my heels by a roar of rage.

"What the hell is this, Tunner?" he demanded, waving the directive
creatmg the Combined Airlift Task Force. "What are you trying to do
to me?"

I swallowed and made the best explanation I could, that these negotia-
tions had been going on for some time, and that LeMay and I had hoped
to complete them before he arrived to save hun the lengthy and com-
plicated involvement, and that we thought he would be pleased. I felt
that my explanation pacified him somewhat, and we parted on fairly
good terms. In fairness to Cannon, I may have been a little impatient
with him. I was then forty-two, cocky and confident in my knowledge
of air transport and the ability of my staff to carry out its duties, and I
did not feel that I needed any advice from an aging combat man of
fifty-six years. All I wanted was to be allowed to carry out my mission
as I saw it should be done. I had been sent to Germany for this specific
job by a very high authority. I needed help, his help, and his primary
job as I saw it was to aid us logistically. I wanted to be left alone—
I knew best how the job should be done.

The sparks from that first meetmg never cooled. Our personal differ-
ences have no bearing here, and I will not air them. General Cannon,
who has since died, was a highly respected pioneer in the Air Force, and
rightly so. Our disagreement stemmed from the basic differences between
combat people and transport people. These differences seriously affected
many phases of the Airlift, and they should be related for the benefit of
future air transport operations.

As the commander of a Task Force, I operated under the authority
of a letter of instructions from the commander, USAFE. Under the terms
of LeMay's letter, I was permitted to co-ordinate with my own people,
the personnel of the Task Force, base coramanders, and the like. I could
not, as I have mentioned, co-ordinate with General Qay. I was not
specifically authorized to co-ordinate with MATS and the Ak Materiel
Command, but, on the other hand, I was not forbidden to talk to these
two organizations, and as it so happened, I was in frequent contact with
both of them, with the complete awareness of LeMay. You may recall,

190 / OVER THE HUMP

for example, that on Black Friday I visited the tower to get a look at

the traffic control operators who had let things get so out of hand. It
was soon apparent that the men on duty there lacked the experience
necessary for them to cope with the density of traffic to be expected on
the Berlin Airlift. It was vital that we have experienced men. I thus got
on the transatlantic teletype dkect to Larry Kuter immediately to re-
quest that several skilled operators be sent to Berlin. His personnel sec-
tion tracked down twenty experienced reservists currently working for
the Civa Aeronautics Authority at civilian airports in the United States,
and in just four days after my direct request these men were in uniform
and on the job in Germany. I had no reluctance whatsoever to make this
kind of request of Larry Kuter, or his counterpart at the Air Materiel
Command in supply or engineering matters, when the situation war-
ranted it, and from the prompt response I always received it would be
natural to conclude that they were glad to deliver.

My experience has always been that on the Air Staff and within the
Service Commands of the Air Forces there exists a great mass of knowl-
edge on every subject, and those responsible will do just about anythmg
to get it to the man m the field who needs it I have heard complamts
about the slowness of getting supplies or engineering data or perhaps
personnel. When one turns the stone to see why, it is usually because the
request never gets in to the man who knows in time. Unfortunately, this
became the case here, as I shall recount.

For my letter of instructions from General Cannon changed the situa-
tion immediately. From that day on I was specifically forbidden to
co-ordinate with MATS, AMC, and just about everybody else. From
then on all contact with other commands had to be made through
USAFE headquarters. Instead of getting special personnel on the job in
Germany four days after I requisitioned them, we'd have been lucky to
get the requisition through USAFE headquarters itself in four days. It
was particularly difficult when MATS was involved because Cannon
seemed to dislike MATS and didn't want to have anything to do with it.

His attitude was not something new. The ATC had had a similar
problem during World War n with a few of the older, tactically indoc-
trinated officers. One reason may have been that most of the talent in
the wartime ATC was not professional in the military sense and was no
doubt responsible for breaking some long-established rules and customs.

The Bertin AirUft / 191

Of course, the ATC also did a tremendous flying job. At any rate, here
on the Berlin Airlift I was not only ofladally told, but verbally reminded,
that I would take no matter up with MATS. I felt at the time that such
a traditional motivation had no place in a military operation of the scope
of the Berlin Airlift.

Another of the big areas of conflict was in morale. The majority of
personnel assigned to the Airlift were on temporary duty, which had
been extended, extended, and extended again. The bloom was off the
tost. Morale was understandably low. Everybody wanted to go home.
K I had had the authority, I would surely have sent some of the extreme
hardship cases back to the States, but I did not have that authority. I
couldn't bring men in, and I couldn't send them out. Cannon, however,
as commander of USAFE, could and did. He liked to be known as a
good fellow. He always wore a big smile, and he liked to go around
listening to the troubles of the GI's. If the story was good enough, he'd
send the man home regardless of his duties, or how long he had been in
Europe. Word of this got around, and the more members of the Task
Force began to think of Uncle Joe Cannon as sympathetic and kind-
hearted and fair, the more thek commander, I, became by contrast harsh
and cold and a miserable guy to work for. Not only that, but some of
the people Cannon sent home were key men in the Airlift operation.

I use these personal experiences to show the inefficiency of the awk-
ward setup under which the Airlift Task Force was operating. The Berlin
Airlift was particularly frustrating in this regard in that the Airlift per-
sonnel lived and worked side by side with the occupation forces; their
morale could not help but suffer by contrast. Before the Airlift, the
occupation people had as soft a job as you could find in the military
establishment, workmg a couple of hours a day and scrounging the rest.
Suddenly they found the exciting and somewhat bewildering Airlift in
their midst; it went on around the clock, and so did its personnel. How-
ever, in fairness, by the time the New Year rolled around, over six
months later, the entire mflitary establishment in Germany was operating
at the accelerated tempo.

The housing provided for my personnel in Wiesbaden and Rhme-
Main was grossly inadequate. Airlift men were crowded together in poor
quarters. The occupation forces, who were on permanent duty and as-
signed to permanent establishments, lived like kings in contrast, and this

192 / OVER THE HUMP

made the quarters of the Airlift personnel seem even more miserable.
Transportation provided was also inadequate. I thought that if my staff
could schedule four-engine planes so that they could get off the ground
every three minutes, the least Cannon's staff could do was to provide
reasonably punctual bus transportation for crew members from their
quarters to the base. These matters were the responsibility of USAFE,
but it was the Airlift which suffered.

My oflficers and I were, in effect, placing our military careers on the
line. We were expected to deliver. We would have had a great deal more
chance of running an efficient operation and fulfilling the mission had
we had control of our personnel resources. An Airlift command, as a
command in any other large and vital operation, should always have
some control of replacements, promotions, awarding of medals, and
selection of its key officers. It should have, if it is to last more than a
few weeks, admmistrative and logistical control as well as operational
control. To have operational control only over a long period of time will
spell the doom of any vital, all-out enterprise, for subordmate com-
manders may, and do, look to the administrative boss for support or
sympathy when the going gets tough. They can always complam, perhaps
legitunately, "My troops are too tired to go on," or, "They don't have
enough of the right food," or, "They don't have the supplies they need."
As the operational man has no control over these matters, all he can
do is bluster or complain to the administrator himself; actually he is
powerless.

Even today I can see no reason for the personality conflict. I cer-
tainly showed no rancor; I was junior to General Cannon in both years
and rank, and I paid to him the full military respect that I expected from
my subordinates. I was told that he resented a younger man getting aU
the glory. Well, there was more than enough to go around. With more
co-operation the Airlift could have been a greater success, and he could
have had all the credit for it— just let me get the job done.

Another responsibility of USAFE was the maintenance depot at
Burtonwood m Engjand. Our original plan had been to shift the two-
hundred-hour inspections from "Oberhuffin'puffitf " to Burtonwood with
the advent of the harsh Bavarian winter. Jules Prevost and I had visited
Burtonwood at the beginning and had been assured that we could count
on seven two-hundred-hour mspections a day there, provided we could

The Berlin AirUft / 193

inciease the depot's personnel. To accomplish this I transferred main-
tenance men from the various squadrons flying the Airlift to Burton-
wood. As the squadrons would no longer be responsible for the two-
hundred-hour inspections, this reduction in personnel seemed justified.
Maintenance operations were transferred to Burtonwood at about the
time General Cannon took over contunand of USAFE. "Oberhuffin'-
puflSn' " had been imder Airlift command, but Burtonwood was not. At
first the new depot met its commitments in fine style, but then its output
slackened off. Prevost and other maintenance officers flew over to Bur-
tonwood repeatedly, as did I, and we all agreed on the various causes
of trouble. The depot is just outside of Liverpool, and it was dmgy, dirty,
and depressing-looking. Living quarters, containing only those tiny Eng-
lish coal stoves, were cold and dank. The chow was greasy and tasteless.
The weather was the poorest — ^rain, sleet, smog — of anywhere in Britain.
Of course, this greatiy affected the morale of the men trying to do a job.
This was the story of the Hump all over again — ^the supplies and equip-
ment and enough trained people to perform a highly technical assignment
just hadn't been made available from the States.

Had I authority even to co-ordinate with the Air Materiel Com-
mand, I could have taken these problems up directly with them.
The local commander who was able and conscientious could do little.
As it was, all that my maintenance officers and I could do was point out
wherein the trouble lay to the responsible persons at the depot, and hope
that something would be done. But instead of action we got excuses and
empty promises. Repeated requests to USAFE that it do the necessary
bogged down in red tape. Inspections at Burtonwood fell to an average
of less than two a day. As our operations were based on the firm figure
of seven a day, this could conceivably mean a loss of 35 planes a week,
ISO planes a month! I did not permit this loss to take place, of course,
but the only way in which I could avoid it was to shift the responsibility
for the two-hundred-hour inspections back to the squadrons. This was
a double hardship, for I had already reduced theur maintenance per-
sonnel by the Burtonwood transfers. The men remaining had to carry
a double load, and they were justified in resenting it bitterly. It meant
a twelve-hour day every day for my maintenance men.

The shortage of supply even extended to such basic items as wrenches
and screw drivers. Yet all the time many replacement parts and tools

194 / OVER THE HUMP

of every description were right there in the theater, stored away in
a large depot near Erding, in the Munich area. A great mass of supplies
left over from the war, carloads on carloads of supplies, had been poured
into this depot at the very time when key personnel were being dis-
charged from the service. LiteraDy tons of equipment, millions of items,
were unrecorded. No one could know for sure just what was in the
depot or where it was. It was humanly impossible to change this general
condition overnight.

Thus USAFE was not able to provide me with supplies from its own
depot, and was leery about requisitionhig diem from the zone of in-
terior, lest the Pentagon point out that it was asking for things it already
had. This was no concern of mine. I needed those replacement parts
and tools right then and there. I didn't care where they came from. I
had a daily tonnage to meet If I was short one day, I would have little
opportunity, particularly with the weather and the supply situation, to
make it up. On November 30, for example, one of those pea-soup fogs
closed in on Berlin. You couldn't drive a car m the city that day, much
less land a plane. Of forty-two planes which took off for the city, one
landed. This was our lowest day. (We always got some tonnage in.)
There was forty-one hundred tons the Airlift was short, right there. To
make it up I needed the fullest support and co-operation of the head-
quarters directed to furnish that support

Conditions were bad and getting worse as we neared the Christmas
season. I began hearing of the great Oiristmas program being planned
by Washington and USAFE for our Aklift boys. Vice-President Barkley
was coming, along with Stuart Symington, Secretary of the Air Force,
and Kenneth Royall, Secretary of the Army. But the big name to the
GI's was Bob Hope. We heard it on the radio, read it in cKppings sent
from papers back home, in the Stars and Stripes and in our own Task
Force T//nej— "Bob Hope to Bring Christmas Spirit to the Men on
Berlin Airlift." Jinx Falkenberg and Irving Berlin would be in the show,
too. Out on the bases everybody was talking about it. To men far from
home, working long hours, living under conditions that were noiw too
good in summer, terrible in winter, and made more dreary by the nos-
talgia of the holiday season, just the announcement of such a show
brings a feeling of elation. Somethmg to look forward to, to break the
monotony, to talk about: this can go on for weeks.

The SerUn AirUft / 195

On December 23, I learned, for the first time, the places and times
for which the shows were scheduled. There would be two shows, one in
downtown Wiesbaden, far from the air base, on Christmas Eve — for the
USAFE headquarters boys, and one show in downtown Berlin, far from
the airfield, on Christmas Day — ^for the Army troops there. After all that
build-up about the show being for Airlift personnel, not one show was
scheduled to be held anywhere near where Ahrlift personnel could see it.

When I heard this, I exploded. According to the ojBicial record of the
staff conference on December 23, "General Tunner expressed his ex-
treme displeasure over the Bob Hope show which had been billed as a
show for the Airlift."

Extreme displeasure indeed! I was mad clear through. It was the
Airlift which had brought Bob Hope to Germany, and everybody knew
it. There was no reason for any entertamer, least of all one of Hope's
stature, to put on a show for the occupation troops. It was my Airlift
boys, working their butts off around the clock, who deserved that Hope
show. I knew full well that events of this magnitude — ^the Vice-President
of the United States and two cabinet members were involved — ^had cer-
tainly been approved by General Cannon, but that didn't stop me. I
fired off an ultimatum to headquarters USAFE immediately: Either put
on the Bob Hope show at the bases where Airlift personnel could see
it — or strike all mention of the Airlift from the advance billing and
publicity inunediately. Think of what the press back home would make
of that

Hope, of course, had no idea all this was going on. He thought all
along that he was bemg scheduled to appear before Airlift personnel.
From my own acquaintanceship with him I knew that he was a great
and good guy sincerely trying to help the Ahrlift, and he'd have been
mighty distressed to learn that he wasn't. USAFE headquarters obvi-
ously didn't want him distressed, either, for within twenty-four hours
some changes were made in Bob's itinerary. Express priority was given
Ahrlift persoimel at the Berlin and Wiesbaden shows, and three more
shows were scheduled at Ahrlift bases. A great majority of the Ahrlift
personnel did see the Bob Hope shows. I didn't get a chance to myself,
but that was all right. I had done my job.

On Christmas Eve I briefed Secretary Symington on the Ahrlift and
its problems, along with General Jhnmy Doolittle, who was also visiting

196 / OVER THiB auM*

US. Symington was intent on doing a thorougjx job, and I had some ideas
on what that thorough job might include. On Christmas Day I took him
over the Rhine-Main air base to show hun the operation. General Cannon
met us there. Symington covered practically every square foot of the
working section of the base, mtroducing himself to the men, puttmg them
at their ease, and then asking pertinent and intelligent questions. Thus he
learned at first hand, from the men themselves, many of the unpleasant
living conditions that I had been screaming my head off to USAFE head-
quarters about but which had never ^tten to the Secretary of the Air
Forces, to its Chief of Staff, or even to the Air Staff. In the maintenance
section we stopped behind a grimy mechanic workmg on an engine. He
looked around to see this obviously important civilian standing over him,
flanked by a lieutenant general and a major general, and tried to come
to attention.

"Relax," Symington said, for the hundredth time that day. "I'm Stu
Symington. Just wanted to see how you're gettmg along with that engine."

''Oh, I'm going to get it fixed all right, sir," the mechanic said, "but
I could do it better if I had better tools."

"Whaf s the matter with your tools?" Symington asked.

The mechanic held up a screw driver, a wrench, and a pair of pliers.
"See these?" he asked. "Well, I bought 'em myself right here in Germany,
and they're all I got, and I can't get any more, and they ain't worth a
good god-damn."

There was a long silence. Symington looked at me. *Tliis is what
you've been telling me all along," he said. Cannon turned red. I said
nothing; I knew when I was ahead. Other men backed up that first
mechanic. At the completion of the tour, Symington was all business.
He wanted facts and figures furnished him immediately, m black and
white, so that he could inaugurate action immediately to ameliorate our
most serious problems. He planned an immediate further inspection, and
in the meantime, my entire staff and I got to work right away gathering
and preparing the material he needed. We worked the rest of that day,
Christmas, and all the next. None of us could have asked for a more
wonderful Christmas present than this opportunity to present the facts
where they would receive action. On the morning of the twenty-seventh
I personally placed in Symington's hands a thorough and meaty memo-
randum, with a copy to USAFE. Subject: "Supply and Mamtenance

The Berlin Airlift / 197

Problem — ^First Airlift Task Force/' It specifically cited the dijBBculties
in two-hundred- and one-thousand-hour inspections, level of supplies,
shortage of shop equipment, and training of aircraft mechanics, as well
as the situation in housing facilities and allied matters. Each problem was
followed by our recommendation for its solution.

The response came almost immediately. Orders came down to requisi-
tion better housing, and construction began on emergency barracks.
Burtonwood was shaken up from top to bottom, and the increase in
two-hundred-hour inspections began almost immediately. Long-needed
supplies began flowing in. Frankly, I was amazed at both the amount
and the immediacy. Symington must have gone straight to his office from
the airport and started pushing buttons right away. StaflE officers from
the Pentagon began to come over m increasing quantities.

From then on our problems m the areas of housmg, inspections, and
shortages of supplies were of far lesser sigmficance. A rotation system
was set up by Air Force headquarters to relieve the onerous extended-
TDY situation; a crew-training center Kuter had set up earlier at Great
Falls now made this possible. It was still somewhat difficult operating
under an unsympathetic command, and I am still convmced that we
could have performed our mission more successfully had we had greater
authority to run our own show, but at least from then on we had suffi-
cient tools to work with.

I also took advantage of Symington's Christmas visit in another matter.
Over the years I had been giving much consideration to the utilization
of bigger planes in air transport. On the Hump, you may recall, I
planned eventually to replace all the two-motored C-46's and C-47's
with the big, ten-ton capacity C-54's. The war had ended before this
plan could be put into effect. When I was first brought into the Berlin
Aklift we were, through necessity, flying a large number of C-47's. In
this operation in particular, where space for planes was at a premium,
there was no place for this sturdy little ship, and by October the Air Forces
had replaced them all witii C-54's. But thid was the year 1948, and now
the C-54 was as obsolete, cargowise, as its predecessor, and practically in
the same proportion. Shortly after the war Douglas Aircraft had come
out with a new transport plane, the C-74, designed strictly for the mili-
tary, with a capacity of twenty-five tons. Thirteen of these giant planes
were built One was broken up in statifc tests, one crashed, and the

198 / OVER THE HUMP

remaining eleven became a part of the MATS fleet. Before the Berlin
blockade I studied the plane's performance over a period of a year and
a half and presented a paper praismg it highly and pointing out the many
advantages and economies the big new plane, with a few modifications,
would provide.

In Operation Vittles the big plane proved itself. I begged Kuter to
loan me some. He did — one. It might be interesting to note what I said
about this plane back in October, 1948, when the Airlift was just gettmg
underway. The following is from an article written by Paul Fisher and
published in the United Aircraft Corporation's Beehive:

General Tunner reached into a pile of papers and lifted out a
chart.

"The lessons we've learned from the Airlift are tremendously
important," he said. "Or, if you want it another way, we've proved
concretely here some important things we believed all along. We
know, for instance, that the future of mUitary air transport — and
this inevitably applies to coromercial cargo transport — ^is in the big
aircraft.

"Look at these figures," he went on, placing the chart on the
comer of his desk. "A task force made up of 68 C-74's could haul
the 4,500 tons needed in Berlin each day. It takes 178 C-54's to
do the same job, or 899 C-47's. With C-74's you would only have
to make 5,400 trips a month to maintain your tonnage average,
where the C-54's must fly in 13,800 times or the C-47's 39,706.

"The economy runs all the way through. In the C-74 you would
need only 16,200 hours of flymg time a month, compared to 42,888
in the C-54's or 158,824 in the C-47's. Look at crews. One hundred
and eighty C-74 crews could do the job where we need 465 for the
C-54's and 1,765 for the C-47's. The same ratio in maintenance —
2,700 C-74 mamtenance men could accomplish the job that would
require 4,674 on the C-54's, and 10,588 on the C-47's. And finally,
you could fly the C-74's on 6,804,000 gallons of fuel, compared to
the 8,577,600 needed by the C-54's, or the 14,294,000 the C-47's
would need."

(Editor's note: The C-74 gave proof of its utility September 18
when it was aloft twenty hours out of the twenty-four and carried
150 tons of supplies into Berlin. Six round-trip flights were made m

The BerUn AirUft / 199

the twenty-four hour period, two more than the usual our-block-
a-day" schedule followed by the C-54's and C-47's.)

General Tunner pushed the chart aside.

"The future of air cargo is not necessarily in high speed. It's in
big airplanes, driven by powerful but economical and reliable en-
gines. The big, efficient, dependable piston engine right now looks
like the modern cargo plane power-plant answer, at least for some
time.

"Here we knock ourselves out flying thousands of hours with the
C-47. The boys simply work their hearts out and at the end of the
day they realize that all they have flown into Berlin was a dribble.
Tm not minimizing the fact that C-47's and C-54's have done this
job. You can't take away their magnificent performance and I, for
one, think these aircraft gain stature for doing a job for which they
were never designed."

Later, as we flew more and more tonnage into Berlin, the superiority
of the twenty-five-ton transport became more and more obvious. With
one plane which could do the work of three, all of our major problems
would have been proportionally reduced. With only one-third of the
flight crews and ground crews to house, quarters would not have pre-
sented such a problem. With a third of the airplanes to maintain, the
situation at Burtonwood would have been less desperate.

As we steadily increased tonnage, it was necessary for us to increase
the number of bases. More and more bases were put into service until
at the peak of operations we were flying from nine bases in West Ger-
many into three airfields in Berlin. I have already explained the elaborate
procedures necessary when we were operating with only three bases and
two fields in Berlin. Thougji we tried to keep procedures simple, it was
imavoidable that, with nine bases feeding into three fields, complications
resulted. If we had had a full fleet of the Douglas C-74's for the Airlift
we would have been able to deliver eight thousand tons daily using only
two bases in West Germany and one field in Berlm. Imagine the savings!
Using more bases, and two fields in Berlin, we could have increased the
tonnage up to twenty-four thousand tons a day, far more than the city
required, and in addition could have taken out every smgle item that
was manufactured there. Even this could have been done at considerably
less expense than the actual operation with ten-ton planes.

200 / OVER THE HUMP

When, back before Christmas, I leamed that Symington was coming
to visit the Airlift, I determined to take fuU advantage of his visit and
show the Secretary of the Air Force the advantages of big-plane opera-
tion. Evea if he approved the program immediately and sold it to Con-
gress overnight, the planes wouldn't come oflE the line in time to help us
on the Berlin Airlift (unless it continued for years), but I was not think-
ing in such short-range terms. It was becoming obvious that the Soviets
weren't going to let the world live in peace. There would be more situa-
tions requiring prompt and effective action by American air transport
For the safety and security of our country, and to carry out whatever
mission it should be assigned, that air transport should be more than
adequate. It should be based on suitable equipment— big planes.

And so I had a series of graphs drawn up showing clearly and un-
mistakably the value of the twenty-five-ton plane not only to the Berlin
Aurlift, but to the American Air iPorce. When Symington came Jo Airlift
headquarters for his first briefing, I was ready for him. At our first meet-
ing, after a careful briefing on the Aklift, I got right onto the subject
of the twenty-five-ton plane. He listened intently, and I could tell that
he saw the good sense in big-plane operation. From what transpired
later, he obviously set about gettmg this airplane into the inventory of
our Air Force immediately upon his return to Washington. I had given
him the concept, but he carried on from there in exhaustive detail, en-
couraging and approving numerous refinements and improvements. The
final result was built by Douglas, just as the C-74 had been. It was the
famous C-124, the Globemaster. The C-124 carries fifty thousand
pounds. The front opens up like a clamshell, and ramps go down like
the legs of a praying mantis. You can roll any cargo you want, even light
tanks, right into this big beast. For years now it has been the backbone
of the American miUtary transport mventory. The first few were used
on the Trans-Pacific Airlift to Korea. Since then they have been used,
and used heavily, in air transport all over the globe. Though obsolescent
now, they still comprise the majority of the MATS fleet. They have
served their countiy wefi, and I don't know what we would have done
m the emergencies of the past few years without them. I'm proud of the
fact that they got their start in that briefing room in Germany at Christ-
mastmie in 1948, but the fuU credit for them, and the gratitude of the
nation, should go to Stuart Symington.

The Berttn AirUft / 201

A year or two after the Berlin Airlift ended, I happened to run into
Symington in Washington. I was still impressed by the promptness with
which he got the flow of supplies moving toward us in those terrible,
shortage-ridden days on the Airlift.

"Tell me, Stu," I said, after we had shaken hands, "I've often won-
dered — ^what buttons did you push when you got back to Washington
from Berlin? Things really started poppmg."

He laughed. "Oh, I wouldn't say that Td come up with anything spe-
cial,'' he said. I then expressed to him my appreciation, as a member
of the Air Force with a special interest in air transport, for his successful
efforts in obtaining the C-124 for our country.

"Thank you," he said, "but I can't take the credit. It's you who are
the father of this big airplane."

Visitors to the Airlift were by no means restricted to our own Amer-
ican VIP's. Such was its appeal, so strongly did it capture the imagina-
tion of the free world, that we were constantly being visited by national
leaders, military men, and well-known journalists from many coimtries.
They all had to put up with a degree of informality. In the very first few
days, a party of VIP's bound for Berlm in a C-47 landed at Wiesbaden
for lunch. When they came back to their plane, they found it loaded
with flour.

Qement Attlee, then the British prime minister, chose a most unfortu-
nate day to visit us. As he was en route from England, violent winds
developed in Berlin. They were of gale strength, up to fifty miles an
hour, and of course they were blowing right across the runway. There
was dust all over the plape, hats blowing, a real picture of confusion.
The British at the time did not have a single plane on the Airlift with a
nose wheel; all their planes had tail skids or tail wheels, which made it
more difficult and dangerous to land in strong crosswinds. By that time
all American planes on the Airlift, on the other hand, were equipped
with nose wheels, and we were able to continue operating after the British
had shut down.

In the meantime, tiie Prime Mmister was on the way in a British plane.
He was apprised of the conditions by radio and advised to put in at
Rhine-Main and transfer to an American plane for the flight into Berlin.
I flew up to Gatow to be on hand to meet him. The British were waiting
for their prime minister there in the dust and the wind with all the full

202 / OVER THE RUMP

Strength and glory of the Empire— senior officers standing ramrod-
straight, guards of honor, the works. Finally here came a lone American
plane out of the sky to discharge the Prime Minister and a cloud of black
dust. He'd come in on a load of coal. His first words to the welcoming
committee were: "Why don't British planes have nose wheels?"

And the first words in response were, "We shall look into that imme-
diately, sir."

Another important English personage to visit the Aurlift was Foreign
Mmister Ernest Sevan, a huge man, and outspoken. We had been told
that he was quite sick, having just recovered ftom a heart attack, but
from the very beginning he gave the impression that he could weU take
care of himself. I was briefing him, using large charts, and at the top
of one of them was written in large letters, "Organizational Chart."

"What kind of a word is that?" grumbled the invalid. "Organizational!
What does it mean? Is there such a word in the English language? I
should certainly say not." Though quite amicable, the Foreign Minister
frequently made his presence felt with such a comment. Later we were
driving along the line at Tempelhof when we passed a C-97, a huge
plane built by Boeing and known on civilian airlines as the Stratocruiser.
This one model we had on the Airlift on temporary loan was the fore-
runner of a great line of planes, and I was very proud of having it. I
asked Bevan if he'd like to look at it more closely, and he replied, "Why
certainly!"

We drove over to the plane, and he and I and his two attendants, who
were doubtless instructed to see to it that he did nothing to strain his
heart, all got out and had a pleasant chat with the pilot and copilot of
the big ship.

"Would you like to go aboard it, sir?" I asked. The two attendants
looked daggers at me, for this would mean climbing stairs. Bevan, how-
ever, agreed with alacrity, and we aU made our way up the steps into
the lower deck of the plane.

The Stratocruiser was a two-story airplane, with a ladder leadmg up
to the cockpit from the first deck. "Would you like to see the cockpit
sir?" I asked. *^

"Why, certainly I'd like to see the cockpit," our distinguished visitor
said. His two attendants grew paler.
At the top of the steps was a hatch cover, about three feet square.

The Berlin AirUft / 203

A young enlisted man who had obviously just come over from the States
sprang to precede our distinguished guest up the ladder in order to lift
the hatch and give him a helping hand. For some reason this kid had
been hoarding his corns. At any rate, when he had reached the top and
leaned over to help Bevan up the stairs, the flap of the top pocket of his
flying jacket popped open and a shower of coins poured out, all over the
British foreign minister. With the swiftness of reflex action, the kid turned
loose the hatch cover and dived for his coins. The hatch cover dropped
on Bevan's head. The two bodyguards gasped and started to go for
their guns.

Fortunately, the hatch cover wasn't very heavy, and Bevan had a sense
of humor. He laughed good-naturedly, rubbed his head, and went right
on up into the cockpit. I didn't say a word to the airman; no punishment
I could have meted out would have been worse than the shame and
embarrassment written all over his face. I hope that as the years went
by he has recovered from his mortification. He is, after all, probably the
only man in the world who has dumped a pocketful of American money
on a British cabinet member and then hit him on the head with a hatch
cover.

The steady stream of visitors in no way interfered with the constant,
pulsating continuance of the Airlift. It went on day and night, night and
day. An interesting observation was that of every three planes that
droned on overhead, two were loaded with coal. To many of us this
pressing need of the modem city for coal was somethmg of a surprise.
Sixty-five per cent of everything we took into Berlin was coal. Without
it the city could not survive, for coal meant far more than personal
comfort. It meant light and power, and water and sewage — coal made
the power which drove the pumps — and other municipal facilities. The
importance of coal affected other commodities, too. You would tibdnk,
at first, that an excellent foodstuff to carry in to the hungry citizens of
the beleaguered city would be good old beans, cheap and rich in both
carbohydrates and protein. When you consider the length of time neces-
sary to cook beans, however, and the coal required for that long supply
of heat, it's easy to see that for Berlin beans were not a practical food.

The Task Force was not charged with transporting the coal from the
mines to the bases; that, for which we were thankful, was the province
of the Army Transportation Corps. They did a fine job and maintained

204 / OVER THE HUMP

a high level at the bases. Nor was there any trouble in getting it on the
planes, for our eager-beaver DP's, and later German labor companies,
were, if anythmg, overindnstrious. I personally proved this on one occa-
sion. As I made my periodic informal visits to air bases, frequently at
night and wearing an old field jacket with almost indistinguishable stars,
I began hearing pilots muttering about the strange way the ships were
handling.

**It seems an awful lot more sluggish than it ought to," one airplane
driver said. "It handles like a truck. First couple of tunes I thought it
must be the cargo, but I watched them load it, and it checked out right
on the button— two hundred sacks of coal at one hundred pounds per
sack.*'

I heard more or less the same story from other pilots. Some had com-
plained to maintenance, some had chewed out their ground crews, but
still the strange sluggishness persisted. And it was always when the cargo
was coal.

One day I went down to the big loading yard on the Main River,
where the coal barges were brought in, and watched the unloading pro-
ceedings. The coal came rattling down out of the barges m chutes, then
into sacks held by the civilian workers. The sacks were then loaded on
trucks for the haul to the air base. The men were really working away,
filling the sacks to the brim and hoisting them onto the big trucks with
vim and vigor. They only bothered to weigh about one sack out of a
hundred, and when it was overweight, as it invariably was, they simply
poured a little coal out and threw it on up in the truck. I stepped forward
and had fifty of the sacks already on the truck taken down and weighed.
Some of those so-called one-hundred-pound sacks ran up to 125 pounds;
they averaged out at 115— a 15-per-cent overloading that would mean
a ton and a half extra weight on a C-54 fuH of coal. No wonder the
plane seemed sluggish. The Army Transportation Corps took over the
problem, and it was corrected. It had to be carefully explained to the load-
ing crews that thek overzealousness was hurting us instead of helping us.

I have mentioned the headaches caused by coal dust. In particular,
it had an abrasive effect on control cables and caused erosion m elec-
trical contacts. It even covered the outside of the planes with a grimy
coating that wouldn't wash off. We tried everything to combat it. Our
packaging experts quickly proved that a sack made of several thicknesses
of paper was a better container than tiie jute bags which had replaced

The Berlin Airlift / 205

the emergency dxiffel bags. But still the dust escaped. We tried dampen-
ing the coal, but all this did was increase the weight. We tried sealing
off the cargo compartment. Some ingenious mechanic worked out a
method by which one end of a rubber hose could be thrown out the
porthole, where the slip stream created a suction. With the other end
of the hose the plane could be vacuumed while en route back to its base.
Another of our creative thinkers worked out a shoeshine method to get
the stuff off the outside of the plane. A thirty-six-foot long piece of anti-
icing cloth was thrown over the top of the plane, and one man on each
end pulled it back and forth over the back of the plane. But still the
coal-dust-caused maintenance problem continued. We never did lick it.

Gasoline, which had been our major cargo on the Hump, presented
something of a problem at first. As it was necessary to bring back the
fifty-five-gallon metal drums in which we took the gasoline into Berlin,
they had to be steamed clean in Berlin. When the British brought in a
fleet of tanker planes, we welcomed them with open arms. This became
an RAF-supervised operation. At one time as many as forty-two tankers
were assigned to the Airlift.

The British also came to the rescue when we encountered problems
in hauling salt. Thhty-eight tons of salt a day were required in Berlin,
and there are few commodities harder on an airplane; salt's corrosive
action eats away the alloys and cables. The British early volunteered
their big Sunderland flying boats, which were treated to resist the corro-
sive action of sea water. The Sunderlands were our salt carriers until
early winter, when ice on Havel Lake, where they landed, terminated their
use. Actually, I was glad to see them go, as they were slow-flying, pon-
derous crates, and had to be specially scheduled. After they were frozen
out of the Airlift, the RAF assigned Halifax bombers to the salt run.
Salt was carried in special panniers slung in the bomb-bay section.

After coal, food was next high on the tonnage list, with flour the
largest single conamodity among foodstuffs. Daily requurement of flour
was 646 tons— along with three tons of yeast. Dehydrated foods became
more and more important as processors learned to squeeze the water out
of more and more commodities. Dried milk, both whole and skimmed,
amounted to over forty tons a day. But all the time, we carried in some
quantities of fresh milk, fresh eggs, fresh vegetables, fresh meat. One of
the odd little items was a supply^of banana flakes for children on a
special diet.

206 / OVER THE HUMP

Toward the end of the Airlift we were flying in huge parts of a new
power plant being built in the British section. Some of the single pieces
weighed as much as thirty-two thousand pounds. One steel shaft weighed
twenty-eight thousand pounds. By utilizing the big C-74 and the C-97
we had on hand, plus a C-82, forerunner of the C-119, we managed to
get all of this massive equipment into Berlin.

Some of our heaviest loads came out of Berlin rather than going into
the city. Several small factories continued to operate there. One, inci-
dentally, manufactured loud-speakers for which we flew in the magnets.
On the first such trip the load of magnets wreaked havoc with the planes'
compasses. After that it was necessary to demagnetize the magnets before
loading, and remagnetize them again in Berlin. One of the heavy items
manufactured in the city was an electric engine used to haul coal cars
in the mines. We brought several of them out of Berlm. Thus, in a sense,
the Airlift performed an endless chain: Coal delivered to the mine en-
trance by these sturdy little engines was delivered by the Airlift into
Berlin to make more engines to be delivered to the mines to get more
coal to build more engines.

One of the clumsiest items to load proved to be grand pianos. Eye-
brows may raise at this strange cargo. Our role as piano movers, how-
ever, came about naturally. At the very beginning of the Berlin blockade,
when the Conununists were proclaiming that the Western powers were
going to move out and leave the people of Berlin flat, General Qay
immediately determmed to keep American forces, complete with fam-
ilies, in the city to show the Russians we wouldn't be bluffed out. The
families of the service people almost unanimously elected to remain with
their husbands, and General Qay's determination was further enhanced.
When the normal tour of duty ended for these individuals and they were
transferred out, they had a right to take their personal belongings with
them. It sometimes rankled us on Operation Vittles to fly out a grand
piano and other loot for someone who probably had gone into Berlin
with only a duffel bag, but ours was not to reason why. As a matter of
fact, from the beginning it was made clear that neither the British nor
the American nor the Combined Airlift Task Force would determine
what was to be flown into or out of Berlin. That was the responsibility
of the Air Staff Conunittee in Berlin, composed of representatives of the
French, British, and United States Officers of Military Government.
I would not have it any other way. It is the function of an airlift to

The Berlin Airlift / 207

deliver the goods, not to determine what goods should be delivered.
I had seen this problem of determination of cargo on the Hump, and I
would see it again m Korea. Great pressures were sometimes brought
to bear on the airlift commander to grant favors. Those who wanted
certain items but hadn't properly defended their requkement before the
board or committee would say unnecessary items were being honored in
the requests of others. But we stood with the rules.

The daily minimum supply requirement considered necessary for the
city of Berlin was revised upward on the twentieth of October from a
total of 4,500 tons to 5,620 tons. These included commodities ranging
from baby food to bulldozers and people. The 5,620 tons were broken
down as follows:

For the German Populace: Tons

Food 1,435

Coal 3,084

Commerce and Industry Supplies 255

Newsprint 35

Liquid Fuel 16

Medical Supplies 2

Subtotal 4,827

VS., British, and French Military: 763
Three C-54 Passenger Flights Daily

(U.S., and French) 30

Total 5,620

One of our most delightful cargoes was encompassed by a name of
its own, "Operation Little Vittles." It began when one of our pilots, Fkst
Lieutenant Gail S. Halvorsen, made an off-duty trip to Berlin to stroll
through the city and see what was going on. This was somewhat un-
usual, incidentally; for most pilots Berlin was simply the turn-around
point. Halvorsen had long been used to attractmg crowds of kids. It had
begun back in his home town of Garland, Utah, where he taught the
small fry of the community to ice skate and play hockey. As a pilot
with the Ferrying Command, he got plenty of chances to talk to children
in Africa, Brazil, and points east and west. Halvorsen didn't smoke or
drink, but he liked candy and gum, and his pockets were always full
of it. Somehow the kids all seemed to know.

208 / OVER THE HUMP

It wasn't long, strolling through Berlin, before Halvorsen had a
crowd around hun. Although Halvorsen's German was about as good
as their English, a little sign language helped, and he and the crowd of
children talked together for an hour or more, mostly about piloting
the big C-54 which brought food to Berlin. Halvorsen realized what
was different between these children and the others who had surrounded
him in so many communities over the world: These kids hadn't asked
him for a single solitary thing. It wasn't that they weren't hungry, he
learned, but rather that they were disciplined and shy. Halvorsen emptied
his pockets, and then he had an inspuration. "Be at the end of the
runway just outside the field the next day,'* he told them, and as he
came in for a landing, he'd drop them some more gum and candy. That
night, working with a labor of love, Halvorsen busily made little para-
chutes of handkerchiefs, and slung candy bars from them. Next day, as
he came in over the runway, suddenly the kids waiting beneath saw a
cloud of small white objects burst out of the plane and gradually float
down to their eager hands. "Operation Little Vittles," had begun.

Word of Little Vittles spread among his fellow pilots, then through
the entire squadron and the base. I met Halvorsen and gave him my
personal encouragement. Soon he had so much to drop that he had
to call on other pilots for help. Journalists covermg the Aklift heard
about it and sent word of Operation Little Vittles back to America. It
caught on, and Halvorsen was invited to make a quick trip back to
the States for a personal appearance on the popular radio show "We
the People." The response from the millions of listeners to that program
was fantastic. Halvorsen's unit, the Seventeenth Air Transport Squadron,
was daily flooded with candy (and handkerchiefs for parachutes) by
the generous American people, as well as from some candy manufac-
turers, and Halvorsen and his buddies saw to it that it got in the proper
hands — and stomachs. One day in the spring, my Berlin detachment
arranged an outing for thousands of Berlin children on Peacock Island
in Lake Hegel, with a mass candy drop as the major event.

I happily approved all such programs. The people of Berlin were
fighting for freedom in their own way, with subsistence on minlm^itTi
diets in constant cold, and I was much in favor of these little extras on
their behalf. Another program that went over, incidentally, was the
open house we held periodically at all the bases. We wanted the German

The BerUn AirUfi / 209

people to come in and see what we were doing, and they did. The pflots
would take the kids through the planes.

Despite all our problems, tonnage increased. Our first big day was
Air Force Day, September 18, when we emulated our successful cele-
bration of that day on the Hump three years before and set out to break
records. We airlifted a total tonnage of 5,582 tons to Berlin in the
twenty-four-hour period. The British added 1,400 tons, for a total of
7,000. It was one of those all-out, enthusiastic efforts that permeated
the entire command. It gave us all a booster shot of enthusiasm, and the
daily tonnage stayed high. We contmued to get good tonnage all through
October and into November, and then the weather closed m on us. Let
the San Franciscans and the Londoners talk about the fog in their
respective cities; I can assure them both that Berlm had the world
"beaf * that fall of 1948.

Fortunately we had anticipated bad winter weather, and even though
that winter was the worst for forty years so far as visibUity was con-
cerned, we were still able to keep a reasonable amount of tonnage flying
into Berlin. As weather conditions were not as bad in the northern and
central corridors, I shifted as much traffic as I could to those bases
which were already in operation, and got Kenny Swallwell busy putting
in more runways. I attempted to have Airlift headquarters moved from
Wiesbaden to one of the bases in the British Zone, where our greatest
eflfort was beiag made and which would be closer to Berlin and therefore
more convenient. My British boss, Air Marshal Williams, approved,
but General Cannon had no mtention of lettmg the Airlift out from
under his watchful eye. We stayed where we were.

The first British base used heavily by American planes was that at
Fassberg. Built in 1936, it was considered one of the Luftwaffe's finest.
It was complete in every detail from an indoor swimming pool and
lavish officers' clubs down to the gleaming porcelain vomit basin
mounted on the wall of the day room, to which those who had imbibed
too much beer could stagger. Even so, a large amount of heavy con-
struction was necessary to enable Fassberg's loading ramp to hold the
sixty-five C-54's we put there. Fassberg had the unique distinction of
being an RAF base under command of an American Air Force officer.
To this base I sent one of my best men. Colonel Jack Coulter, with his
lovely wife, fihn star Constance Bennett. Though the combined opera-

210 / OVER THE HUMP

tion worked well, if I had to do it again, Fd bear in mind the differences
in food preference. For one thing, the English and Americans differ
widely in their idea of a good breakfast. I know now that most of our
GTs prefer eggs to kippers and porridge.

From the standpomt of personnel, the British officers assigned to us
fit in perfectly. My plans officer, Group Captain Noel C. Hyde — ^known
to all of us as "Groupie" — was a particularly welcome adjunct to the
staff. He was never caught wordless. I remember one period when
everything was going wrong at Fassberg. At a conference one morning
I told every staff officer to think about Fassberg overnight and have a
concrete reconmiendation to make next morning to improve morale
and operation of the place. The following day I called on each officer
for his recommendation. Every man came up with a pertinent idea, and
when I got to Groupie the remedies were just about exhausted.

"Sir," he said, "I lay awake most of the night, and all I could thmk
of was to say a prayer for Fassberg."

Other British bases included Celle, to which we moved a troop
carrier wmg of C-54's in mid-December, Fuhlsbiittel at Hamburg,
Liibeck, Schleswigland, Wunstorf, and Biickeburg, from which a shuttle
passenger service was operated. Liibeck, mcidentaUy, was the receiving
station for the sixty-eight thousand persons — ^undernourished children
and older people in ill health — ^who were flown out of Berlm. Aus-
tralian, New Zealand, and South African squadrons operated out of
Liibeck in addition to the English squadrons.

Operating both by day and by night, and in that awful fog, we des-
perately needed high-intensity approach and runway lighting equipment.
Lighting was a high-priority item back home, but we managed to have
a reasonable quantity diverted from military and civilian installations
in the States to the Airlift. It was at Tempelhof that the need was
greatest, for though huge, the field was surrounded by high apartment
buildings. These buildings seemed to negate the possibility of extendmg
the lights along the approach to the runway, for this type of lightmg
works best at ground level. The only possibility was a narrow area lead-
ing to the field through high buildings on either side. It was a cemetery.
To install the lights there would require disturbing several graves. This
was a delicate matter, and Swallwell took it to the Berlin city officials.
They agreed without hesitation.

Another delicate matter was what to do about the high spire of a

The Berlin Airlift f 211

church which would block out several lights when coming in on the
approach. Members of the congregation agreed readily to our proposal
that the high spire be removed and a lower roof, designed to their
specifications by a German architect, be erected in its place.

Of the three fields in Berlm, Tempelhof and Gatow were extensively
improved with the addition of runways and aprons, among other things,
but Tegel, in the French sector of Berlin, was built from scratch.

The story of Tegel is a full and complete chapter in itself. It had be-
come obvious during my first weeks on the Airlift that we just did not
have enough landing space in Berlin. We had two runways at Tempelhof
and a third under construction; there was no room for more. Gatow
didn't lend itself to further expansion. We needed a complete new field.
It seems mcredible that a tract of attractive, undeveloped land big
enough for an airfield could exist in the city, but it did. It was a big,
rolling field which had been used for anti-aircraft trainmg before and
during the war. It was located in the French sector, but the French
were easy to deal with. General Jean Ganeval, the French conmiandant
in Berlin, agreed readily to the proposition that we would build a field
and control the traffic, while the French would maintain everything we
put there and provide for the unloading of the aircraft. Swallwell, with
the help of the USAFE and army engineers, designed the plans and super-
vised the project. Once agam I patted myself on the back for having
brought him along, for problems continually arose which would have
stumped just about anybody else. The early runway specifications, for
example, called for a minimum foundation two feet thick, which normally
would have been composed of cement. But in all Berlin there was
neither cement nor the equipment to mix it. Bringing it in by air would
have meant replacing too many tons of vital supplies. We had to find
some substitute material there in Berlm.

"That's a snap," Kenny Swallwell said with a grin. "Our own Air
Force had the foresight to provide all the material we need over three
years ago. There's enough brick rubble from bombed-out buildings in
Berlin to build a dozen runways."

The bricks were collected from the ruins which surrounded the field
and spread out on a hard surface. Caterpillar tractors ground back and
forth over them until they were dust. German civilians — ^men, women,
and children — ^worked eight-hour shifts around the clock carrying the
resulting rubble to the site of the runway and spreading it. For topping,

212 / OVER THE HUMP

they crushed paving blocks. As many as seventeen thousand civilians
were on the job in one twenty-four-hour period. The work began early
in September, when the weather was still hot, and you could see women
in bikinis and men in swimming shorts toiling away. Some venerable
old steam rollers, built before World War I, were located and patched
up, and they provided excellent service in packing down the brick dust.
The other heavy equipment used was brought in the way we'd been
flying heavy equipment all along; it was cut up, flown in in pieces, then
welded back together again.

The engineers had originafly promised the field by January 1. When
they saw what those German civilians swarming over the place could do,
the date was revised to mid-December. The first plane landed, on a com-
pleted runway of more than adequate strength, on Noyember 5.

There was still a serious problem at Tegel, the two-hundred-foot
aerial tower which stuck up in the approach path. Though the tower
itself was in the French Zone, it was owned by a Communist-controlled
station m East Berlin. The proposal that it be dismantled was, of course,
refused by its Soviet-sponsored operators. General Cannon and I flew
into Tegel to attend the services celebrating the airfield's completion,
and we could see that the tower was definitely a nuisance and poten-
tially dangerous. Agam the request was made to the station that we be
permitted to take down the tower, with fuU compensation, but again
we were refused.

A few days later General Ganeval invited the detachment which we
had stationed there, composed of some twenty oflBcers and men, to come
up to his office for a mysterious meeting. When all had arrived. General
Ganeval shut and locked the door. The procedure seemed somewhat
strange at first, but the general provided such excellent refreshments,
and exuded such Gallic charm, that aU suspicions were allayed. Sud-
denly, in the midst of the merriment, a mighty blast rattled the window-
panes and shook the room. French and Americans alike dashed to the
window just in time to see the huge radio tower slowly topple to the
ground.

"You will have no more trouble with the tower," said the General
softly. The Reds screamed to high heaven and attempted, as the French
had anticipated, to lay all the blame on the Americans. Our detachment
had an ironbound alibi, however: they had been under lock and key.

Another gala aflfair, somewhat more impromptu, occurred in the

The BerUn AirUft / 213

Communist-dominated capital of Prague. The weather was terrible
that day, with fog and heavy rain, and on top of that the pilot of a C-54
bound for Berlin took the wrong heading over Fulda. He flew on and on.
Finally he came to a hole in the clouds, and there beneath him was
an airport. He didn't question his luck any further; he just wanted to
get that plane down on solid ground. Shortly after he found himself,
wMi crew, plane, and ten tons of coal, at Prague, Czechoslovakia. The
Czech Air Force officers gathered around, and soon great rapport
developed. The Czechs insisted that the Americans be their guests at
dinner that night; and the crew, tense from flying lost tiu-ough fog all
day and not averse to unwinding with a little food and drink, accepted.
First, however, the pilot said, he would appreciate it if someone would
call the American Embassy in Prague and tell them an American plane
was in town. In a surprisingly short time, the American military attach^
was at the field, doing his best to break up the party.

"I don't want to seem inhospitable," the military attache said, "but
if I were you fellows, Fd get the hell out of this place as quick as I
could. This country is crawling with Russians. The Czechs don't like
them, and they do like us, but the fact still remains that it's the Russians
who are calling the shots. So now how about getting out of here quick,
huh?"

"We're dead-tired," the pflot said, "and we'd sure like a little sleep.
These feUows here say they'U put us up for the night. Suppose we do
that and clear out first thing in the morning."

"O.K.," the military attache said, "but if anything happens, it's your
fonwal."

In the meanwhile, the Czech officers had arranged the party. There
was plenty of good food, excellent wines and liqueurs, and good cama-
raderie. Everything was just fine. But hardly, it seemed, had the three
Americans turned in when they felt themselves being shaken awake.
It was the military attach^ again. He'd been tipped off that the Russians
had found out about the American visitors and were at that moment
trymg to track them down.

"You better get out of here fast," the military attach6 said.

The boys did just that. They dressed, sUpped out to the airplane, got
in, started the engines, and took off, just like that. It was still lousy
weatiier, and they managed to get home witiiout being seen.

Some time later tiie military attach^ came tiirough Wiesbaden. "Every

214 / OVER THE HUMP

Czech oflficer who was at that party or had anything at all to do with
the American fliers," he told me, "has now disappeared. Vanished
without a trace or clue."

The CALTF was a truly combined force. In addition to units of the
Royal Air Force, there were units of the Royal Australian Ah: Force,
the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the South African Au: Force.

Two United States Navy squadrons also participated in the Airlift.
They were not only Navy, but they represented the very cream of the
Navy. They came in with the obvious resolution that they were going
to show naval superiority, and I welcomed then: spkit wholeheartedly.
It was a pleasure to have them aboard.

So pleased were we to have them, we told the pilots as they arrived,
that we had even arranged a special and appropriate weather condition
for them. They came m during November, that ramy November. As a
matter of fact, the weather was so terrible that some of the mcoming
planes weren't permitted to land at Rhine-Main and were sent on as far
as Vienna. Most of them did come in, though, and I made it a special
point to be there waiting for the first arrivals. What a reception! The
entire field was covered with water; at the hard stand where I awaited
them, the water was up to my knees. As one of the mechanics pointed
out to me, "This is the only place in the world where you can be up
to your knees in water and have dust blow in your face."

The first R-5D, naval nomenclature for the C-54, landed in that sea
of water, sendmg spray and spume high mto the ak. It splashed its
way over to where I was waiting, and came to a stop. The door opened,
and its crew looked out. I'll never know which of us must have looked
the most ludicrous to the other. What I saw was a small group of men
in navy blue uniforms with highly polished shoes preparing to step out
into the wmter mud and rain of Hessian Germany. What they saw was a
two-star general standing in water up to his knees, trying to look digni-
fied. Finally we all started laughmg. There wasn't much else to do.

"General, sir," one of the natty young men in blue sang out, "just
tell me one thing — are we at land or at sea?"

"Why, we ordered this just for you," I said. "We wanted the Navy
to feel at home."

I operated under the assumption that the Navy had come to work,
and I made the opportunity available to them immediately. After flying
more than halfway around the world, the crew of the first plane to

The Berlin Airlift / 215

arrive found themselves, less than four hours later, on the way to Berlin
with a load of coal. They also had on board an Air Force check pilot.
The regulations required all incoming pilots and copilots to make three
trips imder the supervision of a check pilot, and it just so happened
that we had no check pilots at the time who were also naval officers.

As the days, weeks, and months went by, the two squadrons blended
in excellently with the Combmed Airlift Task Force. The Navy did some
things differently; a naval squadron contained some 400 men in con-
trast to the 250 in an equivalent Air Force squadron. The Navy also
carried a far greater inventory of spare parts and supplies. The end
result was that the Navy maintained a somewhat more expensive, but
more self-contained, operation, with less improvisation than the Air
Force, For example, they msisted on doing their own overhauls at the
base rather than send the ships to Burtonwood, and they were manned
to do this. But each got the job done in its own way. We had twenty
Air Force squadrons, two Navy squadrons, as well as the equivalent of
ten Royal Air Force squadrons, and though the Navy squadrons were
always near the top in performance, Air Force squadrons would hold
the number-one spot at about the ten-to-one ratio you'd expect. On the
Ahrlift the rivalry was fierce, but it was between individual squadrons
rather than between the services. When Commander James O. Vos-
seller*s VR8 squadron exceeded its quota by over three thousand tons
in one month, we all took off our hats to him and his men.

And so the winter went on. Working with the handicap of limited
equipment and the other shortcomings of the divided command re-
quired constant attention, seven days a week. The long hours took
their toll. I lost weight and developed a persistent cough. I was ordered
to take a few days rest, and Spain was reconmiended as a quiet place.
Somehow or other the Spanish government got the impression I was a
most influential person, and, in the current Spanish effort to woo the
United States, set out to make my reception in Madrid a memorable
one. The plane was met by a military band and at least fifteen reporters
shooting questions at me in Spanish. A colonel who gave his name as
Sartorius was being solicitous all over the place. T nearly turned around
and went right back to the comparative peace and quiet of Operation
Vitties, but it finally turned out for the best. Colonel Sartorius furnished
excellent acconmiodations, and I did get a few days rest.

Thougih those of us who devoted our full energies to the operation

216 / OVER THE HUMP

of the Airlift had little time left over for the power politics going on
around us, we did keep up with the situation in general. For in Berlin,
and in the great capitals of the world — Washington and Moscow, Paris
and London — ^great changes were taking place.

Today, with the Berlin Wall brutally sealing off the two sectors of
what was once one of the world's largest cities, it is hard to remember
that when the Berlin blockade began, the people of Berlin could travel
about the entire city with comparative freedom. Many Berlmers lived
in one sector, worked in another. There was but one city government;
the elected city assembly and its executive coimcil, the Magistrat, met
at city hall, which was in the East Sector. So were many municipal
offices to which people came from all over Berlin. The bank that handled
the city's finances was located in the East Sector. It was not until the
blockade proved ineffective and it became apparent to the Soviets that
they coxild not engulf the entire city that they began ruthlessly to divide it.

Negotiations between the four powers in Berlin itself reached an
impasse almost inmiediately and moved up to higher diplomatic levels.
On August 2, as I was looking over the facilities at "Oberhuffin'puffin' "
to determine whether our two-hundred-hour inspections could be per-
formed there, the first high-level conference on Berlin was being held
in Moscow, with Premier Stalin and Prime Minister Molotov receiving
a delegation from the West. As the senior ambassador in Moscow,
former General Walter Bedell Smith, who had been General Eisen-
hower's right hand man in World War n, led the delegation. Am-
bassador Smith, who of course had never seen the Hump Airlift, re-
vealed later that he had little faith in the ability of the Airlift to supply
Berlin, but apparently he played his cards close to his vest and did not
reveal his doubts to Stalin and Molotov.

At the meeting Stalin played the role of the genial, easy-to-get-along-
with leader, and the meeting at first seemed to be a success. When the
broad generalities agreed upon there were brought to Berlin for imple-
mentation, however, negotiations bogged down completely. Although
many more meetings were held on all diplomatic levels in the ensuing
months, the blockade continued.

And so did the Airlift. As more G-54 squadrons came in, as we
stepped up the beat, as the people of Berlin could look up into the sky
on any clear day and see our planes coming in, one after the other.

The Bertin AirUft / 217

steady as clockwork, they could not help but be impressed. They came
to Tempelhof by the thousands to watch the planes come in. As one
Berliner expressed it, he was at first dubious over the possibility of the
Airlift's success, then hopeful, and finally, he noted with jubilation, he
reached the stage of "earplugs on the bedside table."

The Airlift gave the Berliners a rallying point. Its mere inception,
even in its first unorganized beginning, helped the people's morale in
that it was a daring innovation and something to talk about. It helped
dispel the cold fear in the hearts of those who would never forget the
Russian orgy of looting and raping that the Western powers would
depart and leave them to the Russians. It helped dispel the fear of
hunger, and it even helped dispel the fear of another war. For the Ber-
liners could see that this was a clever, nonviolent way of circumventing
the blockade.

Before I arrived, a tragic event had occurred which served as a strong
catalyst in polarizing the thoughts of the people of Berlin. An American
coming into the city with a full load of food, had crashed, and
its pilot and copilot had perished. The entire populace grieved. Mayors
of the six boroughs in West Berlm together visited Colonel Frank L.
Howley, the military commandant, to express their sorrow. A plaque was
erected at the site of the crash paying homage to the two American
fliers. "You gave your lives for us!" Fresh flowers were kept constantly
by the plaque, and for weeks letters and expressions of regret poured
in from the people to newspapers and American headquarters.

On September 9, despite every effort made by the Communists to
prevent the meeting, 250,000 Berlmers gatiiered at a meeting in front
of the Reichstag. Franz Neumann, leader of the Social Democrats,
Ernst Renter, mayor-elect, and others addressed the crowd. It was the
first big sign of resistance.

When the Soviets first announced that there was plenty of food in
the Eastern Zone for anyone who would come and register to get it,
it was still summer, and the extremely small numbers of * Berliners who
did register perhaps did not prove much. But as winter came on, the
numbers still remained low. Communist newspapers appealed to the
residents of West Berlin to come and register for food, proclaiming that
the fresh foods available were healthier than the dried and tinned foods
we were bringing in by Airlift. There was so much coal in East Berlin,

218 / OVER THE HUMP

the Communist papers bragged, that they were running out of places
to store it. And yet, in spite of the inevitable shortages of food and
fuel that winter, the highest cumulative total of registrants, including
those persons who worked in East Berlin and those who lived in border
areas close to the registration points, never exceeded 86,000 — less than
4 per cent of the total population of West Berlin.

But the Soviets succeeded in dividing the city. They left people of
West Berlin no choice but to choose their own government. Election
day was set for Sunday^^ December 5. Communists prompdy announced
the boycott of the election, with the result that candidates represented
only the three Democratic parties. Communists used every means at
their disposal to attempt to keep voters from the polls, including
threats of violence and reprisals. Yet, when election day was over, it
turned out that eighty-six out of every one hundred bona-fide voters
had cast their votes. It was truly a great day for freedom m Berlin.

And this, of course, occurred during our most frustratmg days in the
operation of the Airlift, as we struggled under terrible weather condi-
tions and the problems resultmg from a divided command.

Never, from the very beginning of my conmiand until the end, had I
subordmated flying safety to any other phase of operation. Despite our
round-the-clock operation and the miserable weather conditions, our
accident rate on the Berlin Airlift was less than the over-all average
for the United States Air Force. Of the total number of lives lost on the
Airlift, seventy-two in all, of whom thirty-one were American, the
great majority resulted from nonflying accidents. One of the many
journalists who visited us, on looking at our accident figures, burst out:
"Why I'm safer on the Berlin Airlift than I am flying between Wash-
ington and New York!"

Though we never became complacent, yet the steadily mounting
tonnage in February and March tended to give all personnel the feeling
that we now had the problem licked, that they could rest on thek
laurels. We even had all the planes we needed: 154 assorted British
types, 225 C-54*s, with an extra 75 m the maintenance pipeline and at
the Great Falls school, and 200 of the 225 in daily service in the cor-
ridors. In the air room at Airlift headquarters, no less than fifty analytical
charts were kept up to the mmute around the clock; a quick look, any
hour of the day, would give me a clear over-all picture of the entire

The Bertin Airlift / 219

complex. Things were going too well. It was necessary, I felt, to do
something to shake up the command. But what?

The answer was competition, competition, competition! Just as, back
on the Hump, we'd had our one-day Derby, just as we'd celebrated An:
Forces Day just six months before, so now, in April, we would schedule
one big Gung Ho Day with a quota set in advance for a far greater ton-
nage than we'd ever hauled before. What would be the occasion for the
event? The calendar answered that question. In just a few more days
it would be Easter Sunday. We'd have an Easter Parade of airplanes, an
Easter Sunday present for the people of Berlin!

The first man I sounded out on the idea was Red Forman, now my
commander at Wiesbaden. Red was all for it; for a moment we were
silent with nostalgia, thinking of the days back on the Hump. Then I
got the staff together and we began making definite plam. First, we
decided on absolute secrecy. If we set a quota of, say, ten thousand tons
— 50 per cent higher than we had ever done before--and then failed to
bring it off, the Communists would crow over it

In spile of our secreqr, word of the impending event spread to USAFE,
and up to Cannon's deputy. Major General Robert Douglas. (Camion
was in the States at the time.) Douglas called me immediately.

"I don't want to discourage you," he said. "But even if you have a
lot of tonnage, and then drop way off the next day, Joe's gomg to raise
hdl."

"We're not going tp drop off the next day," I told him. I was sure of
that. We had learned on the Hump that after a big all-out push the ton-
nage would of course decrease the following day when we returned to
normal— fru^ U would decrease to a higher plateau than had formerly
obtained.

By this tune our loadmg experts had become adept at **manying"
loads— combming heavy solids with lighter and bulkier material for the
most efficient operation. But for the big day, we knew from Hump ex-
perience; it would be wise to. concentrate on one cargo. On the Hump
it had been gasoline, here it would be coal. I had Ed Guilbert inquire
discreetly of the Transportation Corps as to the amount of coal on hand,
and he reported back that there was a stockpile of well over ten thousand
tons, ready for the hauling.

Just as on the Hump, preparations fox the big day would require

220 / OVER THE HUMP

Operations officers to schedule inspections with extra care. We wanted
a full complement of planes on hand for Easter without causing a result-
ing shortage on the days before and after.

They did their job well. On Thursday the tonnage was a record-break-
ing 7,100. Next day it fell back slightly, but that was due to the bad
weather. Then came Saturday noon, the beginning of the twenty-four-
hour period called Easter Sunday. At all the bases, simultaneously, the
sergeants from the Operations offices proceeded to the howgozit boards
and tacked up their quotas for the day. Everyone knew there was some-
thing m the wind, and within seconds every board was surrounded by a
group of men, peering, crowding, and whistling. As far as the Airlift
personnel was concerned, the mystery was ended. This was going to be
the biggest day yet. But as the total quota was divided up among the
several squadrons, the significance was not yet open to the public and
the press.

Though the extra quota would mean extra work, it was greeted with
but little griping. Rather, as I had every reason to expect from past ex-
perience, the announcement was met with enthusiasm. Though the posted
quotas said nothing about a contest, nothing about competition, it wasn't
necessary; not to Americans. Right away every man in the outfit, from
the commander down to the lowliest DP with a sack of coal on his back
(who knew that the more sacks of coal he hauled the better his chances
for a big cigarette prize) was rarin' to go.

Days like these gave my chairbome conmiandos in CALTF head-
quarters a chance to get out on the Ime and do some flying themselves.
Though the increased quotas meant hard work, they also meant stimula-
tion, enthusiasm, the thrill of accomplishment. Before long we were all
caught up in the exuberance of the mission. As soon as we'd gotten off
to a good start, I flew on into Berlin to watch the planes come in. Stand-
ing in the ground-control approach office at Tempelhof listening to the
pilots sing out as they came in, I could tell — anybody could tell — ^that
something special was going on. The more stolid British frequently ex-
pressed astonishment at the haphazard and carefree way with which our
pilots announced themselves, but today was the best of all.

Plane No. 5555, known as tiie "Cheerful Earful" because of tiie vari-
ety of ways in which its pilot liked to identify himself, was in rare form.
Sometimes No. 5555 was "Four Nickels," sometimes "Four Fevers."

The Berlin Airlift / 221

For the Easter Parade, he piped out loud and clear, "Here comes
Small Change on the Range."

And 77, who frequently referred to himself as a bundle from heaven,
today gave it the full treatment. "Here comes 77, a bundle from heaven,"
the pilot chirped, **with a cargo of coal for the daily goal."

I shuttled back and forth between Berlin and the bases, applying a
needle here, a pat on the back there. At Celle, one of the two bases in
the British Zone with a large number of C-54's, the boys were carrying
on their constant feud with Fassberg, the other base, with a determma-
tion even greater than usual. The base was running 12 per cent ahead of
its quota. It was long after midnight before I arrived at Fassberg. Things
were really hummmg. Connie Bennett was down on the flight line with
a group of other wives serving coffee and doughnuts. Her husband, Jack
Coulter, came up to me with a big grin. He was running 10 per cent
ahead of the quota, he told me proudly.

"That's fine," I said, "but of course it's not up to what they're doing
over at Celle. They're really on the ball over there."

The grin vanished from Coulter's face, and he turned abruptly to
charge back to the flight line and crack his whip. I took over the owner-
ship of that grin, and headed back to headquarters at Wiesbaden. Dawn
was breaking when I reached my office, I tried to get a few winks of sleep
on the office bunk, but it was hard to stay down so I shaved and went to
the cafeteria for breakfast. Then I got the latest word: We had already
hit ten thousand tons, with several hours yet to go. Every unit was
runnmg well ahead of its special quota, and the weather was improving.

By midmorning we were no longer able to keep the secret, and I cer-
tainly didn't care. General Qay sent congratulations on whatever it was
we were domg, and wanted to know what that was. I sent word back
that it was an Easter present for Berlin. Any member of the press corps
who hadn't smelled somethmg in the air already got the official word
from Clay's headquarters, and the correspondents descended on us in
droves. We were nearing the twenty-third and twenty-fourth hour of
solid work now, but you'd have never known it; the thrill of accomplish-
ment was more powerful than fatigue. And finally the noon hour drew
near, and the Easter Parade would soon be over. Time for only one more
plane. Someone toted up the final score and ran out to the plane with
a paint brush and a bucket of red paint.

222 / OVER THE HUMP

TONS: 12,941
FLIGHTS: 1,398

And then he ducked agamst the blast of wind as the pilot, with just
a few seconds to get into the air, gunned his engmes and headed for the
runway. Just under thirteen thousand tons of coal! We'd come close to
averagmg one round trip for every one of the 1,440 minutes m the day.
The Army Transportation OflScer, Colonel Bill Bunker, put it another
way. "You guys have hauled the equivalent of six hundred cars of coal
into Berlm today," he said. "Have you ever seen a fifty-car coal train?
Well, you've just equaled twelve of them."

In the entire daily operation, we had not had one accident, not one
injury. In all the glory of the achievement, flymg safety had remained
paramount.

I thou^t of the people of Berlin, still getting by on short rations, often
getting up in the middle of the night to cook if that was when thek four
hours of electricity a day was allotted them, and what this extra coal
would mean to them. All over Berlin, I knew, the people knew some-
thing big was going on. Those big planes, thundering in at a quicker
beat than ever before, without cessation for twenty-four hours, would be
the subject of every conversation in Berlm that Sunday. My skin prickled
with pride at the role my men had played in this great demonstration of
generous power on the part of our free nations.

It was that day, that Easter Sunday, I'm sure, that broke the back of
the Berlin blockade. From then on we never fell below mne thousand
tons a day; the land blockade was pointless. A month later. May 21,
1949, the Soviets grudgingly reached the same conclusion and ended it.
Surface trafl&c began to move. We continued the Airlift at more or less
full capacity for three more months, building up a stockpile of reserves
in the city just in case the Soviets might start the blockade agam, and
then gradually began to let down. By September 1, it was all over. In a
total of 276,926 flights, the Airlift had hauled 2,323,067 tons into Berlin.
The'cost? The official estimate was $300,000,000 for the American con-
tribution, but I strongly questioned that figure; I thought it too high.
The cost per ton would be roughly $150. 1 protested. I felt we had been
doing an efficient job, and considering in addition that our operations
were all military, workmg at the usual low pay scale, and the cargo
handlers and loaders were Germans working sixty to eighty hours per

The Berlin Airlift / 223

week for little more than their meals, a more reasonable figure should
be placed on the operation. In answer to my protests, Washington re-
ported that the cost of training and running the school at Great Falls
and reopening the depots in Burtonwood and the United States all had
to be included. I was still not satisfied. Today, with modem airplanes,
large and easy to load, fast, so that many extra trips can be made in the
same time period, and trained pilots and ground personnel available, the
cost might well be only twenty dollars a ton to Berlin.

Whatever the cost, the Airlift had done its job, and West Berlin was
free. We had shown the world what the free nations could do.

Not too long before the blockade I had, with much indecision and
fear that I might be doing the wrong thing, turned down the oppor-
tunity to become a civilian tycoon and perhaps a wealthy man. Now I
was no longer tortured by doubt. The role I played in the Berlin Airlift,
small as it was in comparison to the thousands of men from so many
nations who contributed so much, was worth far more than any success
I might have had as a civilian airline operator. The international recog-
nition was unduly flattering. I was awarded the Distinguished Service
Medal by General Vandenberg, who referred to the Airlift as the "Air
Force's Number One Achievement." The Air Force Association awarded
me and the men of the Airlift its annual General H. H. Arnold trophy,
"Aviation Men of the Year.*' I enjoyed a personal visit with Their
Majesties, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Gteat Britain, and
went through the fascinating ceremony shared by few other foreigners.
This consisted of a military review of my Airlift ofiicers and men, British
and Americans, at Buckingham Palace by the King and Queen, then a
parade from the Palace down the Strand to the Guild Hall for formal
dinner with speeches and eulogies and all the color and pomp that the
British do so vei^ well. Later I was awarded the order of The Com-
panion of the Bath by the RAF's Air Chief Marshal Tedder. The people
of Berlin have tendered their appreciation on several formal occasions.
As an American Air Force ofiScer, however, specializing in air transport,
I was most grateful for the opportunity to prove once again that we could
carry anything anywhere anytime, and in so proving could help maintain
the freedom of a gallant people.

Fifteen years have gone by since the Berlin Ahrlift, and durmg that
time I have been asked on many occasions if we could do it. all over again

224 / OVER THE HUMP

today. My answer is Yes! In spite of the fact, the questioner persists,
that the Russians now have powerful jamming stations in Berlin which
can render our radar ineffective? My answer is still in the aflBrmative.
And then the question comes, "How?"

It reafly could be done with little difficulty. We would use the plane
which was conceived on the Berlin Aklift, the C-124, with its capacity
of twenty-five tons. We would need one hundred planes in all, with
eighty flying the route and twenty in the maintenance pipeline. We would
use only two bases in West Germany, both in what was once known as
the British Zone, located near the central corridor. We would use only
one airfield m Berlin, and because it has the most unobstructed ap-
proaches, this field would be Tegel The total flying time per trip would
be one hour in, one hour out, and we would plan on an eight-hour utiliza-
tion per plane per day. This would give us four trips a day, for a total
of one hundred tons per plane. The eight-thousand-ton total would
really be more than sufficient, as there is on hand in Berlin today a
stockpile of more than one year's supply of coal.

But all this, those familiar with our extensive use of radio and radar
in '48 and '49 will isay, does not take into consideration the possibility
that the Soviets could jam our communications. Ah, but it does. This
schedule could be maintained with no radio, no radar at all. Aviation
antedates both. What we would use instead is one good navigator per
plane. We can fly the entire route at an altitude of five hundred feet;
the terrain is as flat as a landing field. In good weather we'd step up the
schedule; in bad, we'd lengthen the intervals to twenty minutes, thus
eliminatmg any danger of collision. We'd use, basically, the same method
we used before: A rigid order of procedure based on controls, speed,
and split-second timing. The pilot would take off and head for Berlin
at a speed and heading so precise that he might as well be on a conveyor
belt. Once over Berhn at five hundred feet, the pilot would simply land
at Tegel if he could see the field, if not, he would turn down the other
corridor for home base. In short, we could have the Berlin Airlift going
again in a matter of hours, and, thanks to the bigger planes we now
have^ maintam it with fewer problems and greater success.

CHAPTER VI

Korea

It was broad daylight when we sighted Shemya, far out in the
Aleutian Islands. I caught the eye of my pilot, Major Tom Collins, and
gave him the old sign of reassurance, thumb and forefinger pressed to-
gether. From here on, all the way to Kodiak Island, we'd be over the
Aleutian Islands and a constant chain of wartime airfields. The weather
was good, visibility fine; I could see a hundred miles ahead. Our fuel
supply was holding up. Just a few hours before, back in Tokyo, I had
told Tom to make out a clearance for Kodiak, Alaska, thirty-five hun-
dred miles away. He'd gulped, gone off, and done some figuring, then
had come back to say that from Tokyo to Kodiak, if all went well, was
a seventeen-hour flight. He paused and then added, "And you know,
sir, we can only carry seventeen and a half hours of fuel."

*Tes," rd said, **I know how much fuel we carry. We're still going
to Kodiak."

Tom was my aide as well as my pilot, Ray Towne copilot Both were
gray with fatigue.

Tom loved to fly. While a fighter pilot in England, he asked for as
many extra tours as he could get. He had well over 160 fighter mis-
sions over hostile territory, and received twenty-four au: medals.

We'd been flying for days and had a lot more ahead of us, but right
now everything was perfect. Our constant check on the fuel gauges
seemed almost superfluous as the airfields slid by below. Old 5549
roared on over the Aleutians in clear weather, and we came down at
Kodiak with a half hour's fuel still left in the tank — ^a sixteen hour and
fifty-five minute flight.

Kodiak is a naval installation, and I hurried to check in with the base
commander, an admiral.

225

226 / OVER THE HUMP

"rd appreciate it if we could get gassed up as soon as possible," I
said after we shook hands. "We're flying direct to Washington, and Fd
like to take off right away."

^'Washington? DirectX he asked, as though it were some far-off exotic
land. "How in the world are you gomg to fly dhrect to Washington in
that plane?"

"The great circle route," I said, "across Canada and straight on
down."

"I never heard of anybody going that way before," he said.
"Neither did I," I said.

We got some sandwiches and hot coffee, and the tanks filled, and
were on our way again in an hour and a half. I spelled Tom and Ray
at the wheel so that they could each get a few hours sleep as we bored
our little hole through the sky on across the great expanse of Northern
Canada, then down over the Great Lakes. Over Pittsburgh we lost an
engine. We feathered the prop and made a careful check of the other
three engmes. Each was performing perfectly, and as our normal gas
consumption had lightened the plane considerably, I saw no pomt in
stopping for a new engme, especially with bright, clear weather. We
limped on and landed at Andrews Field, just outside Washington, this
time a seventeen hour and thuty-five minute flight but just in time for me
to get in to see General Vandenberg, Chief of Staff of the United States
Air Force, before the day was over.

It was perhaps typical of the Korean War, that strange and tragic
faraway conflict, that I began my personal, direct involvement in it by
flying from Tokyo to Washington in two hops — in the wrong direction.

After Berlin, I had come back to Washington to report back to my
old job as Deputy Commander of Operations of MATS under Larry
Kuter. That fall and winter, 1949-50, was an unhappy period for Amer-
ica, for the military establishment, for the Air Force, and for me. Louis
Johnson was then our Secretary of Defense, and he was proceeding ruth-
lessly with his openly announced determination to reduce the military
budget I sat m meetmg after meeting in which General Joseph Mc-
Namey, known as the Secretary's hatchet man, questioned the repre-
sentatives of our various commands on what they were doing to save
money and, in particular, why certain bases and activities were still in
operation. As a result of these hearings, the Air Force was forced to

Korea / 227

close down many of its main bases over the world. As Operations Officer
of MATS I saw our rate of utilization drop oflE to 2.8 hours per day per
airplane, with but one crew per plane. A civilian aurline, by comparison,
operates its planes eight to twelve hours a day, and maintains three crews
or more per plane — ^the sensible, economic way to get the most out of
these multimillion dollar pieces of equipment.

Despite the severe reduction in the military budget, it was necessary
to contmue trainmg what troops we had left. A full-scale maneuver
called "Swarmer," with emphasis on the employment of airborne troops,
was scheduled for April of 1950. General Lauris Norstad, Chief of
Operations of the Air Force, was commander-in-chief of the Swarmer
exercise, and asked for me as his air deputy. There was a great deal of
hard work and detailed planning involved, but we were all enthused
with the opportunity to help develop the new military science of akbome
operations. My experience in working closely with the Army during my
two years at Fort Benning proved to be both useful and stimulating.
Thus the long hours spent on Swarmer were pleasant and productive
ones, particularly in contrast to participation in the gutting of our mili-
tary machine which was then taking place in Washington.

After the maneuvers were over and we had made a thorough analysis
of the lessons learned, Larry Kuter suggested that Larry Norstad and
I make an inspection in Alaska, with a chance of a bit of fishing on the
side, as a reward for. our efforts. A few days later Norstad and I found
ourselves happily ensconced on the shores of a beautiful little lake
practically running over with fish. It was quiet and peaceful. We didn't
even have a radio.

One day we heard the soimd of an airplane and a little amphibian
came in over the treetops, landed on our beautiful lake, and taxied up
to shore. Out of it stepped General Nathan F. Twining, then commander
of our forces in Alaska. He didn't even ask us about the fishmg.

"They want you two down at the Pentagon," he said. "Haven't you
heard about the war?"

'Warr Larry and I said.

"Yes, war," Nate said. "In Korea. It's tune you guys got back to
work."

"Let's , get out of here!" Larry said, and we packed our gear and
hurried back to our respective desks.

228 / OVER THE HUMP

Mobflizing for war is always an all-out activity, but in the United
States in the summer of 1950 those of us m the military establishment
were particularly hard pressed. Personnel, equipment, and facilities had
just been drastically cut; now we were attempting to reverse that trend
and accelerate at the same time. Our utilization rate per plane had been
slashed— we hadn't even had the money to buy gas for adequate flying
time; now we faced the long uphill struggle to build the rate ujp again.
Critically unportant bases had been closed, abandoned, or placed in care-
taker status; now we had to reopen them. The base at Tripoli, I recall,
had been closed just three days, with its equipment piled in great stacks
on the wharves awaiting shipment, when the order came down to open
it up again.

We had released management personnel, pilots, and mechanics as
well as supply clerks and cooks from the service, and now we had to
find them and bring them back to active duty, along with new men who
had to be trained. It was impossible to augment our skeleton forces fast
enough to enable the Air Force to carry supplies and troops to Japan,
our staging area in the Far East, and we had to turn to the airlme indus-
try for help. Only a few of the major airlines— Pan-Am, Northwest,
United— were in a position to furnish aircraft and crews to fly troops and
supplies across the Pacific as contract carriers, but we found many small
aklines anxious and satisfactory so ended up contracting with ten alto-
gether. We set up one airlift along the northern route, by way of Seattle,
Anchorage, the Aleutians, and thence down to Japan and Tokyo, an-
other along the central route, via Hawaii, Midway, and Wake Island.

As soon as it was possible for me to get away from Washmgton, I
set out in No. 5549 on an inspection trip of our big Pacific airlifts in
order to check up on both private contractors and the nodUtary operation.
In addition to my crew of Collins, Towne, an extra pilot, a navigator, a
mechanic, and a radio operator, I also took Eddie Guilbert, Pete Fernan-
dez, and Orval McMahon. We went out on the northern route, stoppmg
over at each base, and although we saw a little petty chiseling, we were
on the whole well satisfied with the performance of the civilian carriers,
and particularly gratified with the progress made in reopening the
Aleutian chain of bases.

When we arrived in Tokyo, I naturally dropped in on my old friend
ftom the Hump days, Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, com-

Korea / 229

mander of the Far Eastern Air Forces (FEAF). He gre^:ed me with
some surprise.

"Well," he said, "you certainly got here in a hurry."

"Why, no, sir," I said. "I stopped in at several places along the route
to see how the airlift was going."

"Oh," he said. "Just two days ago I asked for you to be assigned here.
I thought that's why you'd come. Well, anyway, you're here now, so you
might as well start working."

"But, General Stratemeyer," I said in consternation. "I only planned
to be away from home a couple of weeks. I've got two kids back home
in care of a temporary housekeeper. I must report to Larry Kuter about
this trip. I'd like to take a couple of days and get back and straighten
everything out."

"You can't get to the States and back here in two days," he growled.
"It would take you more Uke two weeks. I've got a big job for you here."
"What's the job?" I asked.

"All I'll tell you now is that you'll be in command of all air transport
and troop carrier operations, and that you'll have considerably more
aircraft to work with than are here today. I'll tell you the rest when
you're ready to go to work. I'll give you five days."

That's when I got in touch with Tom Collins to tell him we were flying
from Tokyo to Washington with one en-route stop in a C-54. As far as
I know, it was the first such flight.

In Washington, General Vandenberg received me cordially. "I've gone
along with Stratty's request to send you over there," he said, "but frankly.
Bill, it's going to be a short-time job. I don't think it will last more than
a couple of months at the most"

Even though, at the time, the North Koreans had swept down the
peninsula, and the American and Republic of Korea forces held only a
small area in the southeast around Pusan, the optimism shown by
Vandenberg was general throughout the entire military establishment.
Sure, the Reds had caught us by surprise, but now that tiie might of the
United States was committed to the support of South Korea, along with
the majority of the United Nations, the thinkmg was that we were going
to get this little two-bit war over with in a hurry. An all-out offensive
under General Douglas MacArthur, Commander in Chief of both United

230 / OVER THE HUMP

States and United Nations forces in the Far East, would begin any day
now.

"I'm going to send over all the troop carriers we have to help you
out," Vandenberg went on. "There'U be about 250 planes, mostly
C-119's. You already have a group of C-54's over there, plus a group of
C-46's and a large number of C-47's. I think youH have enou^ equip-
ment to do the job."

"Thank you, sir," I said. "I don't know exactly what the job is yet,
but I appreciate your help."

No matter what my mission would turn out to be, I knew I'd need
men I could trust to help me with it, and I set about signing them up.
Bob Hogg and Harold Sims were the first two I called, and then, of
course, Red Forman, who was assigned in Europe. For my chief-of-staff
I chose Colonel Glenn Birchard, a steady, dependable, and intelligent
officer I'd found on the Berlm Aurlift. I didn't give them much time to
say good-by to their families, but that was the price good men must pay.
For such a short stint it was not difficult to make arrangements for the
care of my boys. Bill and Joe.

I was a little apprehensive about the large number of C-119's I was
going to have. This was the big Fairchild Flymg Boxcar that had evolved
from the C-82 we'd used on the Berlin Airlift. It was a good plane, but
still new, and all the bugs hadn't been worked out. I called George
Hatcher, an ATC colonel in World War II, who had served with me
before and who was now an engineer with the Fakchild Aviation Com-
pany. He knew the intricacies of this big plane, and I asked him if he
would care to come back on active duty as my engineering officer. That
way he would be right there as the bugs developed. He accepted the
opportunity eagerly, and I had his orders cut immediately.

Stratemeyer had given me five days. I was back in Tokyo at the end
of four, complete with staff and ready to go to work. He beamed when
I entered his office.

"WeU, you didn't waste any time," he said, "and neither will I. Here,
take a look at this map, and I'll show you what your job is. As you
know, our forces have been driven back to this area here, the Pusan
perimeter. We've only got about one-fifth of what we once had in South
Korea. But now we're getting ready to move. We've got a new Marine
Division, and the 187th Airborne Regiment of the 101st Airborne Divi-

Korea / 231

sion, a bunch of paratroopers looking for a fight, is en route to the
theater right now. Now you see here on the west coast of Korea the port
of Inchon, and just inland the capital city of Seoul. MacArthur*s plan
is to make an end run by sea and air around the peninsula, make an
amphibious and aurbome assault, capture Inchon and Seoul, cut off all
the enemy forces to the south, and wrap up this whole war in a hurry.
Your job is air supply and the paratroopers. To do it we're setting up
a brand-new command for you, the Combat Cargo Command. Good
luck."

Headquarters of the Combat Cargo Command, or CCC, would be
located at Ashiya, on the island of Kyushu in southern Japan, across
the Tsushima Strait from Pusan. My command, and the Fifth Air Force
under Lieutenant General Earle E. "Pat" Partridge, would be parallel
commands, each reporting directly to General Stratemeyer. I knew Pat
Partridge well, and had the greatest respect for him as a tactical air
commander, but I had certainly learned by this time that tactical air
people just don't understand air transport. With both of us going our
separate ways, answerable only to Stratemeyer, I had every hope that
Partridge and I would get along fine.

From the beginning, the organization and mission of air transport in
Korea benefited from our experience of the past. Of primary importance,
all transport planes were placed under one command. This was not
effected without overcoming some misconceptions. The Army felt that
the planes used for the occasional paratrooper drop should be at Army
disposal all the rest of the time, too; this was the way it had always been.
The Marines and Navy wanted their separate air transport fleet, and so
did the Fifth Air Force. Prying these aircraft loose from the organiza-
tions to which they were already assigned was not accomplished over-
nigiht, but I was persistent. When the protestations ended, I had the
planes — all of them.

On my recommendation the responsibility for the allocation of airlift
tonnage to the using services was assigned to a Far East Command Air
Priority Board in Tokyo. After this determination was made, the Joint
Airlift Control (JALCO) in Ashiya decided exactly what was to be
moved, in what priority, and to whom. Thus the CCC's responsibility
was not to allocate, but to deliver tonnage, not to determine what was
to be carried, what the Army and Navy and Air wanted within their

232 / OVER THE HUMP

tonnage allocation, but to deliver their requirements, regardless, this
was just and proper.

To determine priorities for the Inchon operation, a large conference
was called, attended by the G-3 (Plans and Operations) and G-4
(Supply) of the Fifth Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and me.
Eddie Guilbert and Orval McMahon attended the conference with me.
We were all in agreement that the first and most important job of the
CCC would be to pick up the 187th Airborne Regiment in southern
Japan and drop the paratroopers on their objective, the Kimpo Airfield
between Inchon and Seoul. We would also, of course, have to resupply
them by air, and these supplies would be brought to the area by two
methods. As a part of the over-all plan, the Eighth Army would fight
its way out of the perimeter in the south and proceed overland to the
new front. It would bring its initial suppHes with it, by truck and train;
this would necessitate the repair of road and raihx)ad as the Army moved
along. The bulk of suppUes, however, would be brought in by sea and
unloaded in the harbor at Inchon. The ships were already loaded. The
Fifth Air Force, having anticipated that we would have our hands full
with the 187th, had arranged to follow the same dichotomous plan as
the Army. It would move the suppUes it had on hand overland from its
bases within the Pusan perimeter, but would bring in the greater part
by sea. As in the case of the Army, these suppUes had akeady been
placed on board ships. The Marines, through the very nature of their
normal mission, had no need of, and had made no arrangements for,
long-range supply. Marines, like paratroopers, are designed to hit hard
and fast, and for this job llieir supply reqmrements are relatively modest
It is the Army ground forces, whose mission it is to push on out from
the initial objective, which need the great masses of supplies.

Thus, for the Inchon invasion, the major efforts of the Combat Cargo
Command were concentrated on the dropping of the 187th. When the
daring operation began, we were ready. In the meantime, the Marines
stormed ashore on their first objective, the island of Wohni-do which
dominates the harbor, and took it in a total elapsed time of forty-seven
minutes at a cost of twenty Marines wounded. General MacArthur,
seeing the American flag go up over Wohni from his deck chair on the
Mount McKirdey, was elated. He sent a message to Vice Admiral Arthur

Korea / 233

Struble, commanding the assault, saying: **The Navy and Marines have
never shone more brightly than this morning."

The beach landings continued. Inchon fell, and the Marines fanned
out toward Kimpo and Seoul. Before we could drop the 187th on Kimpo
Airfield, the Marines had taken it. The only thing to do now with these
superlative, expensively trained paratroopers was to fly them to Kimpo,
land them there, and send them into combat as regular mfantry. The
revised plan had two major advantages. First, of course, the troops would
be landed as a cohesive unit, all walking oS the planes at one point rather
than jumping out over a large area. Second, if air-landed, it could go
into battle with all of its impedimenta of some five thousand tons, includ-
ing trucks and heavy weapons, rather than the five-hundred-odd tons of
selected equipment to which the regiment would be restricted by an air-
drop operation. We had more than enou^ planes for the job.

As soon as the Kimpo field was open, our planes took off. I was in
the first flight of C-54's; I wanted to take a look at the field. As a straight
line between Ashiya and Inchon crossed over both enemy-held territory
and over naval vessels with orders to shoot down anything overhead, we
followed a carefully laid-out route around the peninsula and up the
Yellow Sea to Inchon.

When I looked down at the harbor of Inchon, I could hardly believe
my eyes. It was a mud flat. Only one narrow channel led into the loading
docks. I later learned the incredible situation that obtained there. There
is a thirty-one-foot tide at Inchon, and when the tide is out, there simply
is no harbor. Though lighters were available, most of the ships unloaded
at Inchon proceeded through a dredged channel into a lock basin with
a single lock capable of accommodating only one ship at a time — and
it takes a full day to unload a big freighter. So it was that when I flew
over the harbor, I saw this migihty convoy of hundreds of ships lying
at anchor all over the great bay waiting to discharge their cargo. On
those ships were military supplies of every description — ammunition,
gasoline, heavy weapons, vehicles and tanks, rations and medical sup-
plies. In addition, on those ships were loaded almost the complete
supplies of the Fifth Air Force — POL products, bombs, napalm and
ammunition, as well as spare parts and maintenance items. And it was
all being unloaded at the rate of one ship per day in the lock basin, plus
those undergoing the tedious process of transshipment to lighters. I was

234 / OVER THE BUMP

to fly over the mud flats at Inchon many times during the next few weeks,
and the number of ships in the harbor seemed to decrease very slowly.
As a matter of fact, two months after the Inchon landing, the Army G-4
sent most of them back to Japan or Pusan to be unloaded.

But on that first trip over Inchon, headed for the recently seized air-
field, I did not fully realize the enormity of the supply problem. The pilot
brought the plane in low over Inchon, then proceeded northeast to
Kimpo. On the field, bodies of North Korean soldiers lay almost in wind-
rows. Just before, I learned, the Reds had attempted to mount a counter-
attack to recapture the field. They had poured onto the field by the
hundreds, while the Marines mowed them down in a crossfire from auto-
matic weapons. There were so many bodies that their removal was a
major problem.

As our C-119*s disgorged their paratroopers, Marine fighter planes
began coming in. The commander of the Marine Wing, Major General
Field Harris, and I got together and talked the situation over. The
Marine regiments were smashing toward Seoul in a magnificent two-
pronged advance, with Harris' fighters flying close tactical support. He
was using up all his POL and ammunition, and his reserve supplies were
at sea.

"You have the priority. I can bring in all you want, right now," I told
him. In two seconds I had a customer. As arrangements had already
been made to supply the Marine ground troops, the Far East Air Force's
Combat Cargo Conmiand was now aiiliftmg supplies for practically the
entire Marine operation in Korea, and for one paratroop regiment.

We soon had the operation going full tilt at Kimpo, with planes com-
ing in every two minutes, unloading, and getting out of there fast to make
the return trip. I set up quarters in the plane and stayed at Kimpo for
several days. As usual I had a good, capable young staff at Ashiya, and
I knew they were holding down the store back there. I wanted to be up
where I could find out firsthand what was expected of us. I could see
both the Marine Division and the Marine Air Wing working, and get
then- requirements firsthand. Pete Fernandez had rigged up a two-way
teletype system between our portion of the field at Kimpo and Ashiya,
and whatever the Marines hoUered for— more gasoline, more bombs!
more ammunition— we could get it on the way to them immediately.
In the meantime the supplies of the Eighth Army, the X Corps, and m

Korea / 235

particular tiie Fifth Air Force, were either en route over the twisting,
war-damaged road and railroad from the south, or sitting in the harbor.

Fortunately, the Inchon landing was a success which redounded to
the credit of General MacArthur. But it was a success in spite of the
fact that a careful evaluation of all problems which might be faced at
Inchon had not been made. The combination of the loading conditions
in the harbor and the almost impossible condition of the road up from
Pusan resulted in our troops ashore being forced to fight while great
supplies of everything that they needed were still in ships m the harbor.
Many critical items were brought m by air transport, yet the logistics
experts had planned only minor utilization of it.

The Inchon landing is one of history's most glaring examples of the
use of air transport as a corrector of logistic mistakes. Air transport is
frequently used as such, and some degree can be tolerated as it is human
to make mistakes. But it should be constantly borne in mind that the
primary use of air transport should be to airlift critical, scarce, and ex-
pensive items routinely and to make stockpiling of all except very com-
mon items unnecessary. It has become too easy for the logistic experts,
when they suddenly discover that the situation has changed, or that
they've made a mistake or forgotten something, to put in a hurry-up call
for air transport. At Inchon, fortunately, we were available.

After the liberation of Seoul, MacArthur set in motion his plans for
the advance into North Korea. The Eighth Army would continue up
the western side of the peninsula toward Pyongyang, the Communist
capital. The X Corps, composed of the Seventh Infantry Division and
the First Marine Division, would be pulled out of Seoul and shipped
around the peninsula by sea to land at the North Korean port of Wonsan
on the east coast. A joint task force of some 250 ships was assembled to
carry the First Marine Division on this amphibious assault. The Seventh
Division was to come in later.

There was some grumbling about this lengthy and complicated nlaneu-
ver. One objection was that the removal of these two divisions from the
fighting at this particular and critical period would delay effective pursuit
of the fleeing North Korean Army, perhaps even to the extent that it
might get away entirely. The Navy took a pessimistic outlook of the
operation because the harbor at Wonsan was known to be heavily mined;
the North Koreans were able to sow mine fields most effectively by the

236 / OVER THE HUMP

simple expedient of putting the mines in the rivers and letting diem fteat
down to the sea.

Instead of this unwieldy amphibious operation, the Eighth Army staff
proposed that the two divisions proceed overland across Korea to Won-
san. This would of course eatwl the crossing of much rugged terrain
over mountain trails. There was no question but that the overland move-
ment would be exhaustmg, and would take its toll in equipment, as had
been learned in the march up from Pusan.

To us in the CXX) tbe solution was obvious: airlift. From the complex
of aufields in the Seoul area to Wonsan was less than thirty minutes by
air. We had planes, crews, and organization. Compared to some of the
movements of entire Chinese armies we had made on the same continent
just five years before, in World War H, delivering two divisions a mere
hundred miles would be but a mild exercise m air transport. We had
C-54's for personnel and such supplies as ammunition, rations, and gaso-
line, and the big C-119's in which we could carry guns, trucks, tanks,
and the heavy equipment. I proposed to General Stratemeyer that we
volunteer our services for the Wonsan operation. He pointed out that
we now had the joint commitment to help our Fifth Air Force and the
Eighth Army on the west coast, and dedmed to request the job. We
didn't have enough airlift to do ott these jobs! We had sufficient planes,
but not sufficient personnel— crews, maintenance men, and other ground-
support people. But had we been ordered, the CCC could have moved
the enture Marine division and all of its equipment, except heavy tanks,
to Wonsan in five days.

As it was, the Seventh Division, which was to follow the Marines in,
was sent by road southwest to Pusan, a distance over twice that from
Seoul to Wonsan, and there boarded ships for the trip up the east coast
In the meantime the Marines had embarked at Seoul and were on thehr
way around the peninsula. All available mine sweepers in the Far East
were Wonsan-bound. Squadrons of Navy planes from aircraft carriers
were dropping tons of b<nnbs in the harbor in an effort to detonate the
mines. When the mine sweepers arrived, thqr worked day and night;
four struck mines themselves.

As the mine-sweeping activities continued, the transports carrying the
Marines were unable to enter the harbor and instead steamed back and

Korea / 237

forth in the Tongjoson Bay off Wonsan. Their passengers referred to the
whole thing bitterly as "Operation Yo-Yo."

While the Marines were en route, I sent a light plane over the Wonsan
area on a reconnaissance mission. We knew that once the Marines
landed, we would be called upon to supply them by air, and I thought
it wise to look the situation over. The pilot came back to report that
Wonsan had been heavily and effectively bombed by our B-29's and
there was no sign of the enemy anywhere. South Korean troops (I ROK
Corps) had passed by the field and kept moving. The field was suitable
for landing, and our planes flew in General Edward H. Almond, com-
manding X Corps, and some of the advance elements of his staff. UN
forces began buildmg up in Wonsan. By October 24th, there were so
many that we flew Bob Hope and his troupe into Wonsan to entertain
them, and two days later the Marines finally stormed ashore. Though
it was the Marines whose faces were red, they were by no means respon-
sible for the events leading to their discomfiture. We could have had
them in Wonsan a week before.

While Operation Yo-Yo was going on off the east coast, furious fight-
ing and exciting events were taking place in the west, north of Seoul.
As the Eighth Army battered down the North Korean resistance before
Pyongyang, the CCC was m the thick of it. Most of the Army vehicular
equipment had seen service down in the Pusan-Taegu area, and had
been brought up over the narrow rough and rocky road. It was pretty
well shot.

But ammo and gas and rations had to be gotten to the forward eche-
lons some way, and the wounded had to be evacuated. Airlift was the
answer. We flew supplies in, flew the wounded out; our crews worked
to the point of exhaustion. As soon as a field would be uncovered by
advancing forces, we'd be using it. I recall one such airdrome, a big
grass field of about fifty acres, at Sinmak, between Seoul and Pyongyang.
Troops were still fighting at the northern end of the field when I landed
at the other end in a C-54. We had received word from the Army G-4
that this particular unit was in dire need of small-arms ammunition and
gasoline for its tanks. Harking back to the days on the Hump, we had
brought along a large tire in addition to the gas. The planes had hardly
come to a stop before crew members had yanked open the cargo doors
and thrown out the tire. With the engines still turning over, the crew

238 / OVER THJE HUMP

chief, radio operator, copilot and I untied the drums of gasoline, rolled
them to the door, and kicked them out on the big tire on the ground
beneath.

Suddenly tanks — ^American tanks— began streaming toward us from
all directions. A tank would come grinding up, stick its portable pump
nozzle down into a drum of gasoline, suck it dry, and then roar on back
to the fight. A group of wounded men were waiting patiently m line,
and after the gasoline and ammunition had been unloaded, the stretcher
cases were carried on and the walking wounded helped up into the plane.
Then we slammed the doors shut, the pilot poured on the coal, and we
took off. Our pilot made a steep climbmg turn to avoid the enemy small-
arms fire off the far end of the field, and we headed back with our load
of wounded men for more gasoline and ammo.

When the Eighth Army crashed into Pyongyang, the entire North
Korean Army was fleeing northward. The Army was still itching to use
the 187th Airborne Regiment as paratroops. These troops, young, tough-
ened feUows, intensively trained at great expense for the roughest pos-
sible jobs, seemed to exert a hypnotic effect on the higher echelons. In
the minds of the dedicated paratroop officers, or jumping jacks, as we
called them, the question was never whether to jump, but when to jump.
Here at last what seemed to be a reasonable employment for these superb
troops presented itself. Dropping the regiment at the crossroads of the
towns of Sukchon and Sunchon some thirty miles north of Pyongyang
would seal off the major escape routes, trap the fleeing enemy, and per-
haps effect the rescue of Communist-held prisoners of war.

C!olonel W. S. Bowen, commanding the regiment, and my staff worked
out the details of the jump to the most mmiscule degree. Kimpo would
be our base of operations. The transports, C-119's and C-47's, would
take off and group into formation over the field. They would proceed
on a course ahnost due west over the Yellow Sea to a floating radio
beacon in the guise of a Japanese fishing vessel which Pete Fernandez
had procured and outfitted for just this mission. There the planes would
turn on a heading ahnost due north to a point southwest of the drop
zone, where the formation would turn to the northeast and come in over
the coastline. In this way we hoped to avoid observation and anti-aircraft
fire as well as to minimize the possibility of attack by the Russian-built
fighter planes we occasionally saw over North Korea.

Korea / 239

We knew that General MacArthur was personally interested in the
airborne assault. So was General Stratemeyer. So was General Partridge,
whose fighters would precede the paratroopers and soften up the area
for them and also provide the vitally important top cover for our planes.
And so was I.

H"Hour was set at 0800, October 20. The field was packed with
planes. Colonel Bowen and his regiment were ready. There were seventy-
one C-119's, each of which would transport sixty-five paratroopers to
the jump area, and forty C-47's, all ready. Partridge's fighters were ready,
their pilots itching to go. I had my own plane there, too, of course; it was
set up as my ofiSce, complete with radio and telephone. With me were
Tom Collins, as pilot, Red Forman, copilot, Pete Fernandez acting as
radio operator, and Ray Towne. We were ready.

Back in Japan, at Itazuke, General MacArthur sat in his personal
plane, a Lockheed Constellation, with General Stratemeyer at his side.
Two men — eight stars. They were ready.

But the weather was not ready, not at Kunpo. A heavy overcast came
right down to the field. To send all our planes up into that murk would
be to court disaster. The entire operation was paralyzed. We did not
know the extent to which the clouds reached over our heads, nor how
far they reached laterally. As far as we knew, the weather was just as
bad over the drop zone; the North Koreans were not forwardmg weather
information to us. All we could do was wait and hope for clearing skies.
And that's what we did — ^paratroopers, fighter pilots, transport crews,
and generals. At least the generals had something to do. Back at Itazuke
the weather was clear and perfect, and every half hour General Strate-
meyer called me at Kimpo to ask what in the hell we were waiting for.
All I could do was tell him that the fog and the clouds were still there.
I could not blow them away.

About noon Stratemeyer called and said he was considering canceling
the entire operation. But at that moment there seemed to be a slight
lightening m the clouds over us at Kimpo.

"Wait a few more minutes, General," I said. "I think I can get ofE
the ground myself now. I'll go up and take a look around."

There was certainly no danger of collision with any other plane up
above; with the entire Far East Air Force sitting on the ground old 5549
would be the only plane in the sky. As for coming back, if we couldn't

240 V OVER THE HUMP

get in to Kimpo we could simply keep going and land at a field in Japan.
As Stratemeyer had pointed out to me every half hour, the weather was
fine over there.

With Tom Collins at the controls, we took off and spiraled up into
the clouds over Kunpo. The plane broke into the clear at five thou-
sand feet.

"Follow the route," I told Tom. A lone plane m the sky, I was a bit
edgy. I kept pacmg up and down, pausing every second or so to peer
through a wmdow at the clouds below. They seemed to be scattering.
I strode up to the cockpit. Up ahead they were definitely breaking up.
In a few more minutes we could all see that it was completely clear
ahead, with ceiling and visibility unlimited. We still had not reached the
first beacon.

Skies continued clear on the northern leg of the course. We turned in
toward the enemy-held coast. The suspense was gripping. We all peered
ahead until our eyes ached. We proceeded on until we were just short
of the coastline. We could see Sukchon clearly, and it was bright and
clear on toward Sunchong. There was no further question. Both were
dear, completely clear, baflied in the autumn sun. Collins swung 5549
around and headed back to Kimpo. As soon as we were well out to sea
again and I felt it safe to break radio silence, I called in. Our code word
was "No sweat," which was ironic; both Pete Fernandez, who transmitted
the message, and I were dripping with it. He modified the code word in
conformance with actual conditions.

"No sweat left," he began. The message went to my command post,
thence to Colonel Edgar Hampton, commander of the Air Force Task
Force in charge of the drop. The gist of the message was that the route
was completely clear after breakmg out of the overcast over Kimpo. I
advised that his planes take off smgly, clunb to five thousand feet, and
then proceed on planned course to the island of Tok-chok-do right off
the coast. There he would find clear skies. His planes could rendezvous
there, form mto formation, and proceed as planned. I would be back
in thirty minutes, I concluded, and would repeat these orders to him in
person. I wanted him to get started on the final preparations, but I also
wanted to make double-damn' sure he understood me before taking off.

We came in through the overcast, landed, and I hurried to Hampton's
conunand post. He was busy with the final details. I repeated my in-

Korea / 241

structions, but this proved to be unnecessary, as he had understood me
perfectly. Fighters and light bombers of Partridge's Fifth Air Force based
at Taegu were already airborne, on the way to seek out and destroy
enemy strongpoints in the drop zones. The C-1 19's began taking off, one
by one, proceeding to the rendezvous point where Mustangs would pick
them up and convoy them to the area. MacArthur and Stratemeyer, back
in Japan, were given full details. I stayed at Kimpo long enough to make
sure that everything was under control, then took to the ah: again. Flying
directly over the troop carriers, I was in a position to observe them fully
and at the same time stay out of thek way. We flew along with them
to the drop area. The 111 planes, flying in precise formation, made a
beautiful sight. At 1400 hours over Sukchon, the planes suddenly blos-
somed, and white petals fell to earth. Just a few moments later the same
scene was repeated over Sunchon. We put the troopers down exactly
where they wanted to be, in drop zones only a mile long by a half mile
wide. Within one hour we delivered 2,860 men and over 301 tons of
equipment, including jeeps and artillery. After the nerve-racking delay of
five hours, I didn't think we had done so badly.

Midway during the operation I happened to look up, and there, over-
head, was MacArthur's Connie with Stratemeyer, staff members, and
a group of war correspondents aboard. Suddenly the big ship headed
north over enemy-held territory and was soon out of sight. I learned
later that the conmiander-in-chief had decided to take a look at the
Yalu River.

Down below the fighting paratroopers were carrymg out thek share
of the operation with great success. So sudden and unexpected was the
assault that many enemy positions were found deserted, with guns and
ammunition, discarded by the fleeing soldiers, lying around. Heavy
opposition was met in some areas, but they nevertheless secured the
high ground around the jump areas and started expandmg their positions.

I remained over the area until the last plane had cleared, then pro-
ceeded to Pyongyang. MacArthur had returned from the Yalu to fly
over the smoking North Korean capital, and when he saw a couple of
American planes on the akfield there, he msisted upon gomg down. I
had been planning to put an advanced headquarters at Pyongyang and
thought there'd be no better time to find facilities for it, so I told Tom
Collins to take us down, too.

242 / OVER THE MUMP

By the time I landed, Lieutenant General Walton H. Walker, com-
manding the Eighth Army, had reported the fall of Pyongyang. Word
had come in from the drop area to the effect that all was going well.
General MacArthur was elated. As I approached him, he held out his
hand, gripped mine, and pulled me to him in a rough, hearty gesture.

"Congratulations, Tunner," he said. "I am awarding you the Distin-
guished Service Cross."

Operations north of Pyongyang contmued successful. First an ROK
division by-passed Pyongyang to link up with the 187th; then the First
Cavaby Division broke through north of the dty. In three days of opera-
tions the 187th was credited with the killing or capturing of six thousand
North Koreans. Many thousands more were cut off and were eventually
killed or captured. Large stores of winter clothmg and ammunition were
taken.

And now three colunms of United Nations Forces were pushing pell-
mell to the Manchurian border. Many of us now thought that we would
wind this whole thing up by Christmas, Though our hopes were to prove
tragically false, and our forces in Korea were due to suffer a frozen hell
of horror and defeat, this brief mterlude may well serve to examine and
assess the many lessons we had learned in just a few weeks in the unique
and peculiar military operation that was Korea.

At the time we did not fully realize that the Combat Cargo Command
was bringing about a new concept in the science of ground warfare.
Later, General "Iron Mike" O'Daniel, commander of I Corps, was to
say: "The Airlift to Korea is one of the greatest developments of this
war. It gives a commander advantages he has never had in wars before."

No military force in history had ever moved farther, faster, than the
Eighth Army in its drive from the Pusan perimeter to the Yalu. Not
even the ligjitnmg drive of General George S. Patton's Third Army
across France in World War II equaled the Eighth Army's progress
in Korea. The very speed of its movement produced a shock effect
among the defending enemy forces, which in turn enabled the Eighth
Army to proceed even faster.

Though many factors were involved, including the outstanding mili-
tary performance of the ground forces, air transport was nevertheless
the primary new addition to the science of warfare which made this
swift advance possible. The railroad was out, and roads, poor to begin

Korea / 243

with, were almost impassable; it took six days for the round trip from
Seoul to Pyongyang. Both the river leading to Pyongyang and the
harbor at Chinnampo were mined. Air transport was all that was left.
Thus, in this drive up the west coast, the Eighth Army was largely
supplied by air. This one deviation in the normal conduct of war brought
about sweepmg changes m many phases of combat operations. Ak
transport, brmging products and ammunition to tanks at roadside fields,
enabled our armored columns to keep pushing forward. Long supply
Imes were unnecessary; air drops supplied platoons, companies, even
battalions with everything they needed to make war. There was no
need to go back, only forward. There was no need to protect depots.
Through air evacuation, the advancing forces were unburdened of their
wounded. So swiftly did the ground forces move that our engineers
were hard put to keep up with them. We needed desperately to repair
and expand the existmg airdrome facilities at Sinanju, near the Chong-
chon River, for example, but we did not have the engineers and the
equipment for the job. I remembered what we had done in somewhat
similar situations in China and India during World War 11, and in
Berlin during the Airlift, We rounded up two thousand North Korean
civilians and through sheer manpower got the field in shape.

Though a few tons of food and equipment were dropped to troops
in the Pusan perimeter early in the Korean engagement, these drops
represented little refinement in technique over the first few operations
in World War II. They were usually performed from a C-47, Materiel
was packaged as carefully as possible with whatever was available. As
the plane came over the drop zone, the pilot would give his signal, and
the men in the back would start heavmg the boxes through the open
door. Sometimes the pilot would have to make several passes over the
area before the men could get all the cargo out. Each pass usually
meant exposure to enemy ground troops, and we lost both men and
planes. Planes were constantly returning with bullet holes.

Several factors combined in the fall of 1950 to change the air dropping
of supplies from a haphazard stunt to a precise military science. One
was the Flying Boxcar, with its large capacity and open rear end, which
enabled the "kickers," as the unloading crew was called, to unload the
entire cargo in just one pass over the drop zone. Another was the
organization and subsequent arrival in Japan of the 2348th Quarter-

244 / OVER THE HUMP

master Airborne Air Supply and Packaging Company. These were the
parachute-packing experts. Their first big job was the resupply of the
187th Regiment at Sukchon-Sunchon. In the three hundred tons of sup-
plies and equipment dropped the first day were not only such items as
ammunition and rations, but vehicles, field artillery, howitzers, and anti-
tank guns. Vehicles were dropped with gas tanks full: cut on the ignition,
kick the starter, and you were oflf. The whole operation was so well
organized that on the second day, after six hundred tons of equipment
had been dropped, a thirty-man recovery detail parachuted into the area
to collect parachutes and other specialized equipment used in the drop.

From then on, the Command was constantly called upon for air drops.
Although combat conditions made many of these drops necessary, they
were quite costly. Cargo to be dropped had to be carefully and stoufly
packaged and tied to bulky parachutes. Only a small portion of the
weight-carrying capacity of the planes could be used. Packages would
somethnes break on landing or parachutes would occasionally malfunc-
tion; then also, on account of the aim and timmg of the crew, some
cargo always seemed to drop into enemy hands. As it was, the preparation
of cargo for air drop and the packing of parachutes resulted in a man-
power problem. As in India and China, then Germany, I turned to the
residents of the country in which we were operating for help. We broad-
cast an appeal for workers over the local radio stations, and the
Japanese workers' response was immediate. They were efficient and
loyal laborers, and most of them quickly learned to handle jobs of
increasing technical skill. Standout workers were awarded badges re-
sembling paratroopers' wings. They knocked themselves out for the
privilege of wearing those badges.

Another military development of the Korean War was full-scale air
evacuation of the wounded. We had pioneered medical an: evacuation
back in the days of the ATC; this "major miracle of the war," as one
correspondent called it, was developed to its fullest extent in Korea.
Dr. Ehner Henderson, president of the American Medical Association,
after a trip to both front lines and rear-echelon medical installations,
called an: evacuation the most important medical development of the
war. Despite the appalling sanitary conditions in Korea, through air
evacuation the death rate of wounded troops was cut to half of what
it had been in World War II. Through au: evacuation we were able to

Korea / 245

spare our wounded many of the toituous and torturing stages by which
they were moved to the rear in former wars; the number of DOA's — men
found dead on arrival at rear installations — ^was reduced to almost
none. Many of the intermediate hospital installations in which, in former
times, doctors and nurses were called upon to perform major surgery
under field conditions, were eliminated. In Korea our medical air
evacuation experts, they themselves representing a new form of medical
science, worked out methods by which the wounded could be given
preliminary attention in field hospitals, or even simple first aid by the
roadside, and then flown back to permanent and completely equipped
hospitals in South Korea, Japan, or even the United States.

Though surely the system of medical evacuation evolved m Korea
makes sense, as well as demonstrating some compassion for the woimded,
even here there was resistance. A year before air transport had been
ofllcially recognized by the Secretary of Defense as the prhnary method
for transoceanic movements of military patients. MATS had been flying
Korean war casualties from Japan to the United States from the be-
ginning. However, intratheater movement of miUtary patients by air
was not only not utilized to any extent but was actually opposed. The
medical evacuation system then in effect was based upon the Army
philosophy of deliberately keeping casualties close to the front in order
to get those whose wounds proved minor back into combat. Standard
operating procedure called for the wounded to be brought to the bat-
talion aid station by litter-bearers, then moved back through regimental
and division medical installations. At any of these pomts, as the casu-
alty recovered, he could be returned to his unit. From division he could
be sent to a field hospital for emergency surgery or for a short period
of convalescence, or to an evacuation hospital if in need of prolonged
treatment or major surgery.

When I arrived in Korea, our forces were still bottled up m the
Pusan perimeter. Two out of every three wounded men evacuated to
the rear were trucked to Taegu, whence they made the rough overnight
journey by rail to Pusan. There they either remained m the crowded
hospital, or, for the most part, were loaded on board ship and brought
to Japan. The actual percentage of patients brought to Japan by air
through September 15 was less than 30 per cent. We had planes return-

246 / OVER THE HUMP

ing empty from Korea all this time. We could easUy have brou^t back
most of the patients from Taegu, all from Pusan.

On the day I took command of the newly formed Cargo Combat
Command, I named Lieutenant Colonel Allen D. Smith, commander
of the 801st Medical Air Evacuation Squadron, as surgeon of the CCC
and durected him and my staff to consider seriously the full possibilities
of aeromedical evacuation. Smith leaped at the chance to serve our
country's casualties and began working out methods by which the
hitherto catch-as-catch-can methods of evacuation by surface means
could be developed into a scheduled and reliable air-transport system.
The most common method was to assign nurses, medical technicians,
and apparatus to Korea-bound cargo planes, which could then pick up
aeromedical patients. As the system became standardized, it was utilized
more and more. By the end of October, twenty-five thousand patients
had been moved by airlift. Interest was further being shown in the use
of helicopters, by which casualties could be evacuated from the front
lines. Thus in Korea was set in motion a reversal of the basic military
concept, to which our Air Force medical officers were opposed, that
wounded men should be kept close to the front

"The farther and faster the wounded are removed from the combat
area," Colonel Smith stated flatly after observmg ak evacuation for
some period of time, "the better, more efficient, and more economical
will be the medical care." They could be as quickly returned to the
front if wounds proved to be minor.

Air evacuation excited a great deal of interest among correspondents
and observers visiting Korea. I recall that General Carl Spaatz, the
former Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, asked several
questions pertaining to air evacuation at a special brief mg given him
at Ashiya in late September. One of his questions was whether planes
should be designed and built especially for aeromedical evacuation, and
have a large Red Cross, thus becommg a non-combatant auplane. I
replied that I did not think so. We did not have enough planes, and
air space was always at a premium, and thus the plmes we had must
serve the double purpose of taking in supplies and bringing out casual-
ties. In modem war, the Red Cross could not always be seen.

Methods were being worked out to increase the comfort of the
medical passengers on cargo planes, and any discomfort suffered in air

Korea / 247

evacuation was still easier to take than the uncomfortable journeys of
surface evacuation.

Though I did not recoromend any changes in the C-54's which we
were using for medical evacuation, I did consider it necessary that fall
to suggest modifications m the C-119, When I first heard that the Air
Force planned to purchase several hundred more C-119's, each with
additional paradrop equipment built in, I immediately sat down and
wrote a long letter to Larry Norstad pointing out my objections.

At the time, although the plane did have a few bugs, particularly in
the propeller, it was working out well as the medium transport work-
horse of the USAF. What I objected to was the extra weight being
built into every plane to make it usable for paratroop and ak-drop
operations. This extra weight lay primarily in the overhead bar to which
the parachute ripcords were attached, and the heavy structural bracing
necessary to support that bar. This equipment was necessary in the
dropping of personnel and supplies, of course, but it did not have to
be built into every C-119 purchased. At that time, big paratroop opera-
tions occurred once every sixty days at the maximum. The plane was
not idle the other fifty-nine days. By the end of November, the CCC's
C-119's had flown some six thousand sorties, only 228 of which had
carried paratroops. The extra weight permanently installed in each
C-119 thus resulted, in the aggregate, of thousands of tons of cargo
vitally needed in Korea remaining in Japan.

As for the an: drop of equipment and supplies, a letter before me
from my successor in Korea gives the figure of an accrued total of
160,000 tons au--landed in Korea during the first six months of our
operation, with only 10,000 tons dropped.

A proportion of this tonnage was vitally important to our forces in
Korea, but it does not follow that every plane should be loaded with
the extra weight of air-drop equipment. We ah--dropped a very small
percentage, air-landed a very large percentage, yet our planes were
designed for the former at the expense of the latter. The tail was wagging
the dog! Obviously the plane should be designed for the mission it does
normally, and improvised for the air drop, not vice versa, as was actually
the case. Twenty per cent of our total fleet of C-119's equipped for
air drop would have been more than sufficient.

"I am almost reconciled to believe that we will never be able to afford

248 / OVER THE HUMP

all the transport lift that we will require,'* I wrote Larry. "It seems
extremely foolish to me to deliberately throw away the terrific potential
inherently available in this aircraft."

While I was at it, I also threw m my standard objection to a two-
engme military transport plane. We were always being called upon to
wring the last ounce of possible payload out of any plane. Under these
overload conditions, a twin-engined aircraft isn't capable of safe opera-
tion in case of engine failure. (Editor's note: With current FAA rules
two-engine transports must have ample take-off performance with one
engine dead.) I could not help but resort to a comparison of this plane
built after the war, with all the available engineering knowledge amassed
during the war, with the wonderful old C-54, built years before war-
time engineering. This trustworthy ship, with a gross weight of only
seventy thousand pounds, could carry a ten-ton load with utmost de-
pendability. And here was a new postwar plane, with a gross weight of
71,500 pounds, carrying an eight-ton load.

My protestations came to naught m this instance. Although I lost
that battle, however, I have hopes that I eventually won the war; today
I understand that the Air Force is ordering planes of which only a
reasonable percentage have this heavy equipment built in.

Though, thanks to the understanding of General Stratemeyer, I had
been able to set up my own separate command answerable directly to
him, some of the old administrative problems suffered on the Hump
and in Berlin continued to be a nuisance.

On the Berlin Airlift I had been hamstrung through lack of adminis-
trative and logistical control of my own command. In Korea, on
an operational level, the CCC was parallel to the Fifth Air Force, but
we were once again dependent upon the tactical air force for such items
as maintenance, supplies, and housing. Once again it was brought home
to us that operational control is far from enough. You must have over-
all control to operate efficiently. My staff was frequently called upon to
produce miracles^ and, God bless them, they delivered. Orval Mc-
Mahon, the former supply sergeant who was my chief of supply at CCC,
knew all the tricks of that tricky trade. On one occasion, when we were
low in POL supplies and the Fifth Air Force seemed in no hurry to
share theirs with us, Orval located an enture train of POL products

Korea / 249

and diverted it to us at Ashiya. It takes a good supply man to steal a
whole train.

The only item Orval ever had trouble procurmg was a personal one.
As a result of an accident in his youth, he had one glass eye. It, like
his good eye» was bright blue in color. When he went to bed, it was his
habit to remove the glass eye and place it gently on a piece of Kleenex
on his bedside table. One evening he retired with a bad cold and a
whole box of tissues. Next morning Orval, a neat and sanitary man,
gathered up the used Kleenex and proceeded to flush it down the
toilet Too late he realized that he was also flushmg away his glass eye;
it gazed at him reproachfully as it disappeared forever. For a top-notch
supply man unused to coming back empty-handed, Orval had a partic-
ularly frustrating period trying to locate a replacement in Japan. There
were plenty of glass eyes, but not for Orval. For have you ever seen
a blue-eyed Japanese?

As was the case in every other airlift I commanded, the Korean
Airlift had its own newspaper. Ray Towne, my imaginative public
information officer, was editor. At the beginning Ray was not provided
with the office space he felt necessary for this journalistic venture. He
looked around and found a private residence, comfortable and spacious.
Its only drawback was that it was already inhabited — ^by a sergeant,
his wife, mother-in-law, and eight children. The sergeant was due for a
transfer back home, but with transportation as tight as it was it looked
as though he'd be in Japan for the duration. But my staff officers stuck
together. Ray spoke a few words to Eddie Guilbert, our traffic officer,
and presto! space became available immediately for the sergeant and
his brood. As they moved out, Ray moved in, and had his press center
in operation that day.

During that autumn of 1950, many of us, from the Pentagon to
Pyongyang, were living in a sort of iooV% paradise. Though the nights
had begun to be a bit nippy, the days were still balmy and mild. Though
our troops had crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and were penetrating
into North Korea, this in itself did not mean too much; the thirty-eighth
parallel, after aU, is just sixty miles south of the Pentagon, and the
winters there can be unpleasant, but not impossible. As for the enemy,
the resistance of the North Koreans was crumbling completely, and
our troops were penetrating through the rugged mountain country of

250 / OVER THE HUMP

North Korea with comparative ease. In late October, a force of Chinese
suddenly materialized to clobber a ROK division, but they disappeared
again, and MacArthur's intelligence staff remained unperturbed. Plans
were being made to send some units home.

I was ready to join them. Fatherhood is no mission to be carried on
from a distance. One morning, when I was leaving headquarters, a
messenger ran after me with a cable from Taft School, where my older
boy, Bill, was enrolled, bill has broken neck, the cable read, please

WIRE INSTRUCTIONS.

Later I learned that a few key words had been lost in transmission.
Bill had not broken his neck, but his shoulder near the neck. Recom-
mended treatment involved an operation, for which parental consent
was required. At the time, however, knowing none of this, I could only
cable that I hoped they'd do what was best. I had just gotten this
message off and was hurrying out to the plane again when here came
another cable, this time from Washington, where Joe was living with
friends. He had acute appendicitis — immediate surgery recommended.
Agam I answered to do what was best. I probably could have done
little more for either boy had I been home, but at least they'd have
known their only parent was closer to them.

In the temporary normalcy that followed, the hectic days of the
two-pronged advance we were ordered by FEAF — over my objections
— ^to cut plane utilization back to a maximum of three hours per day
per plane. Although I didn't like it, there was some reason for the order;
Stratemeyer's staff was concerned over the real possibility that we would
use up our spare parts and be immobilized for the lack of them. There
was no question but that our inventory was very low; in the pre-Korea
economy wave the An: Force had not been able to maintain it. The
penny-wise practice when purchasing an aircraft had been to buy along
with it only enough spare parts to maintain a maximum flying time of
two to three hours per day. Nor were spare parts yet streaming off the
assembly lines back home. The entire United States was being re-geared
to furnish supplies of all kinds for the Korean War. Still, my staff and
I believed that we should continue to perform our mission to the best
of our ability and deliver everything that was asked of us; it was up to
the Pentagon to exert greater effort to get us what was needed.

About this time Major General Charles L. Bolte, Chief of Operations

Korea / 251

for the United States Army and one of the nation's top military men,
came to Korea on an inspection trip. As he ruefully related to me
later, one of his primary sources of mformation turned out to be his
own son, fighting far up in the mountains of North Korea.

The boy must have chewed his father out, but good. "It's a goddamn'
shame that with all the wealth and comfort there is in the United States
we have to be up here in northern Korea without winter clothes, with-
out blankets, without adequate food, and not even enough ammunition,"
he raged. According to Bolte, his son was absolutely furious, and
obviously with good reason. On the way home wifli his son's protesta-
tions still ringing in his ears, Bolte saw my airfields full of planes,
standing silent and unused. He stormed in to see me at my headquarters
in Ashiya.

"Jesus Christ, Bill," he said, "why aren't you flying in supplies to
those men? They're up there fighting and dying and freezing, and you're
sittmg here doing nothing."

I explained the situation as best I could. In addition to the prohibi-
tion which kept us from flying more than three hours per plane per day,
I also pomted out that there was a severe shortage of maintenance men
and ground crews as well as flight crews. "These auplanes are capable
of flymg three times as much as they are being flown today." I told
him. "Get me the men and the parts, and authority to use them and I'll
get your supplies to Korea."

Bolte heard me out and then flew to Supreme Headquarters in Tokyo,
where he began pushmg buttons right and left. I have in front of me an
official communication from Bolte dated November 8, 1950; it came
down to me from General Stratemeyer, to whom it came down from
General Vandenberg in the Pentagon, to whom it came down from
even higher authority. It read, in part:

I Corps operating with one day of fire on hand. One and one-half
days of POL and three to four days of Qass 1 (Food and clothing) .
Walker says could not improve situation due to long haul. Tunner
hauling 1000 tons daily but could double with more flight crews
and maintenance men. In meantime planes stand idle.

That woke up somebody. Winter clothing and the other necessary
equipment suddenly materialized. Orders came down from General

252 / OVER THE HUMP

Vandenberg overriding the restriction on utilization of equipment. With
great pleasure I threw the CCC into high gear agam. We delivered
winter clothing and equipment to small airfields throughout Korea, and
air-dropped tons more to advance elements now approaching the Yalu.

Winter in Korea, we were learning fast, is not the same as winter
along the thirty-eighth parallel m other parts of the globe, with the
possible exception of the Colorado Rockies, The cold air mass piling
up over the great frozen areas of upper Siberia and the Arctic Ocean
spills down upon Manchuria and Korea in the winter. To those men
in North Korea the cold was particularly bitter and penetrating. The
advance elements had been driving themselves relentlessly for weeks,
burning every ounce of fat off their bodies. Their field rations didn't
provide the high amounts of calories they needed in subfreezing, often
subzero temperatures. The woolen uniforms and socks, blankets and
overcoats, the shoes and galoshes, the parkas and gloves, all these, in
addition to increased food rations, must have made existence in those
frozen, barren hills at least a little easier for our troops fightmg there.

And then came the Chmese. Today we know that troops from Red
China had begun to slip across the Yalu River as early as October 14.
By the end of the month, four Chinese armies were in Korea, proceeding
unseen down along the moimtain backbone of the peninsula in night
marches to their preplanned points of ambush. These were highly
trained, well-disciplined soldiers with the benefit of a generation of
experience in guerrilla warfare. Their mission was to destroy the United
Nations forces in Korea.

In some respects we had made this mission particularly easy for
them. Between the Eighth Army on the left, the Marines in the Chosin
Reservoir area m the center, and the Seventh Division on the right were
wide gaps. The Chinese used these avenues to work their way to superior
positions, outflanking our troops. Then they struck. Wearmg white
uniforms invisible against the new snow, the eerie wail of their bugles
echoing off the stark mountainsides, the hordes of Chinese poured down
upon our troops. The ROK Second Corps collapsed, enabling the
Chinese to make a deep penetration to the south, then turn west to
strike at the flank of the Eighth Army. To the east, the white-clad
soldiers of the Chinese Ninth Field Army, twelve divisions of them,
filtered between regunents of our First Marine Division and the Seventh

Korea / 253

Infantry Division. Some Seventh Infantry units were completely annihil-
ated, and remnants of others worked their way west, toward the Chosm
plateau and the Marines.

This wild, desolate area around the large, man-made lake of the
Chosm Reservoir was accessible on the ground by only one road, the
narrow track twisting through the rugged mountams to the city of
Hungnam on the coast. The Chinese cut it in a dozen places, isolating
units all along it. The two advanced Marine regiments, in desperate
and gallant actions, fought their way back to one central point, the tiny
mountam village of Hagaru, or Hagaru-ri. ("Ri" sunply means village.)
There, completely surrounded by the enemy, they consolidated and
prepared to fight their way out.

Shortly after midnight on the first day of December, I was awakened
by an officer courier bringmg a handwritten message from Colonel Hoyt
Prindle, my liaison officer with Lieutenant General Edward M. Almond's
X Corps. My eyes skipped hurriedly down the hastily scribbled lines.

I am in General Almond's outer office and waiting to get in to
see him. I attended briefings both last night and this morning . . .
The situation at and near the Chosin Reservoir is critical. We must
exert every possible effort to airdrop supplies and ammunition into
that area m order to get the 1st Marine Division out or we will be
lost.

There are already between 900 and 1000 casualties that urgently
need air evacuation now. If we don't get them out, they won't get
out.

A 3,200-foot strip being hacked out of the frozen earth will be
ready by 4 p.m. this afternoon. It may or may not be under enemy
fire. We will have to take that chance. If usable it will help the air
evacuation situation and also re-supply the unit that is near the
strip. The support of others must be handled by air drop . . .

The lih Marine Regiment and other units are going to fi^t thek
way out during the next two or three days. There are roughly ten
Chinese Red divisions closing in on the area. In a few more days
it will be too late. The roads to this area are cut in a number of
places and everyone will have to fig^t his way out ...

Everyone here is in over his head . . . There is little need to fly
in supplies here, except those urgently needed to be airdropped . . .
Some adtical items like hand grenades ...

254 / OVER THE HUMP

10:30. I just came out of Almond's office and he asked me to
express to you in the strongest terms the xirgency of the situation
in the Chosin Reservoir area. Re-supply of those units will have
priority over all other requests.

The general plan is to withdraw from all directions including the
Manchurian border and the Chosin area to form a perimeter
around Hamhung. Concentrate on the perimeter around Hamhung
and Hungnam and bring the Marines out and the 7th Division
and X Corps headquarters, put them on boats and get them out
of the whole area ...

I attempted to get through some kind of a telephone call a few
mmutes ago but there is no connection except by third person
relay ... I will have to send an officer back to brief you today.
There is a woeful lack of information here on what lifts in the
form of drops can be expected, what specific missions can be
expected . . .

This was written in a hurry so I would like to repeat — the drop
situation and the relief of the 1st Marine Division is most urgent.
It is a C«47 operation entkely from the way I look at it and if we
are able to air land into the strip which is located one mile south
of the southern end of the reservoir.

Fortunately my staff and I were all together in a rough but adequate
house on the base. I sent the duty officer around pulling everybody out
of bed. After that he was to start locating and alerting C-47's. I got
my clothes and went down to the little dining room; it would serve as
our conference room. Red Forman came running in, buttoning his shirt.

"Here's a job for you, Red," I said. "You're in command. Get gomg."
As he was getting underway, I called FEAF, got General Strat out
of bed up in Tokyo, and told him of the situation at Chosin.

"I am going to move every C-47 I've got up there," I said. "I think
it would also be wise if we put two squadrons of C-119's up there, too,
to do air drops of ammunition, clothes, and anything else they need."

"Go ahead and do anything you think best," Strat said without
hesitation.

Within one hour from the time I was awakened, every C-47 in Japan
and Korea was ready to go, complete with crew. The C-119's were next.
I didn't know exactly what was needed in the Chosin area, but it seemed
a pretty safe bet that the troops could use winter equipment, rations.

Korea / 255

small arms, and ammo. By noontime the C-1 19's were over the fighting
area, seeking out isolated Marine and Seventh Division units fightmg
their way back into Hagaru, and dropping them supplies.

The C-47's were loaded with supplies too, but the strip was now
reacty, and they could be unloaded on the ground. The first pilots I
talked to said that the strip was only twenty-five hundred feet long, not
thirty-two hundred, but it was possible to land there. It was at Hagaru-ri,
where the hea;dquarters of the Marine Division was located. Men had
worked round the clock, using searchlights at night and often under
enemy fire, to scrape it out of the frozen earth.

Though Red was running the show efficiently, it was my job to be
where the big effort was. My first stop was Yonpo Airfield, near
Hamhung. This was our transfer point. C-47's were shuttling back
and forth from Yonpo to the strip at Hagaru, C-54's back and forth
from Yonpo to Japan. At Yonpo I saw the wounded being taken from
the C-47's and placed in the C-54's. Within two hours they would be
warm and comfortable in the big base hospitals in Japan.

I hopped aboard a C-47 loaded with ammo and bound for Hagaru.
It was only a few minutes' flight, but as I looked down at the narrow
road, twisting and turning through the ugly, rugged mountains, I could
see that on the ground the same trip would take hours, even days. Every
yard was a good place for an ambush. We flew over a saddleback ridge
and there beneath us was the tiny village of Koto-ri. A regunent of
Marines was holding on down there. Ahead of us lay the narrow
valley leading to Hagaru. Below us now were Chinese. I saw an
American convoy on the road beneath us, but as we passed over it, I
could see that the vehicles sat motionless, shot up and burned. The
convoy had been ambushed.

Then came Hagaru. I saw the strip immediately. It was on the east,
right-hand side of the valley coming in, along the side of the ridge. We
couldn't overshoot it, that was for sure, as it ran into a mountain in the
north. I told the pilot to circle the field once so I could look it over. I
doubt if he approved of the order, as he had flown in before and knew
that Chinese troops were all around the field, popping away at our planes
with small-arms fire, but he carried it out without hesitation.

In the center of the strip I could see a small parking area where three
planes sat, then: noses right across the runway. There was no room for

256 / OVER THE HUMP

more. As we circled, one of the planes pulled out and took off to make
room for us. To the left of the strip were the tents of the Marines, and
a few thatched huts. There was a narrow strip of ground to the left of
that, and then the mountains. As we came in for the landing, I saw
machine-gun emplacements at the south end of the field. Until we
reached them, we were over no-man's land. As we came down, we were
within range of the Chinese positions on the ridge. Several planes came
back to Yonpo with bullet holes in the fuselage and wings, but if the
Chinese were shooting at us as we came in, or later, on taking off, I
wasn't aware of it. My pilot gave them as little opportunity as possible.
Once he had curded the field, he came down fast. We hit hard.

The first sight that met my eyes as we pulled in the tight little space
were the wounded men, waiting patiently to be loaded on board and
flown over the mountains away from this place. Some were on litters,
some on crutches. Behmd the wounded a tent flap had been erected.
Under it were long rows of what appeared to be round mattresses. They
were the dead, each corpse placed in a mattress cover, which was then
tied around the top. Frozen stiff, the bodies were stacked like logs. They,
too^ were flown out of Hagaru.

From the hills all around came the sound of war, the crack of carbmes,
the heavier sound of the M-1, and the big noise of mortars and artillery.
From behind every ridge, I knew, the enemy was watching.

On the way to the headquarters of Major General OUver P. Smith,
commander of the Fkst Marine Division, I heard a roar overhead and
looked up to see a procession of C-119's come in, dropping supplies in
the strip between the tent area and the mountains. The parachutes were
of several different colors — ^yellow, white, green, blue, red— each color
indicating the contents of the package to which it was attached. They
were pretty against the gray winter sky. One of the chutes failed to open,
and the package came whistling down to land with a bang on the frozen
earth. General Smith must have heard it, too, for the first thing he said
to me when I entered his tent was a complaint about the chutes not open-
ing. Two of his Marines had been hit and killed by these missiles. Ail
I could say was that we tried our utmost to keep the failures down, and
had a very low percentage.

"It looks like you can hold your perimeter all right,'' I smd then.
"Now here's what I can do. I can take out all your wounded. I can bring

Korea / 257

you all the warm clothes you need, all the ammunition and POL sup-
plies and food. Now, can you get out of here O.K.?"

"No," he said. "The road is out on both sides of us, and the bridges
are knocked out between here and the coast It's going to be rough.''

"Do you want me to fly you out?" I asked. "I believe I can get most
of your people out, and maybe some of your small vehicles."

'Thanks," he said, "I'll need the whole fighting division to get every-
body out — ^there are hundreds of our men up ahead, too. But you take
out these sick and frostbitten and wounded."

But Smith could not begin his epic march to the sea immediately. He
had to hold his position until all the stragglers had come in and all the
wounded had been flown out.

Back at the strip, I watched for a few minutes the swift and efficient
operation there. The moment an incoming plane would come to a stop,
both crew and Marines would pitch in to unload it. Then the wounded,
waiting there in the bitter cold with dignity and patience, would be placed
aboard. From the fellows on the strip I learned that some of my pilots,
carried away with the importance of the mission and acting with the best
of motives, had been seriously overloading theur planes. There were
stories of pilots permitting thirty-five, even forty wounded men on board.
One pilot claimed to have flown out forty-two.

This was downright silly. In this thin air and with this short runway,
the reasonable limit would be thirty. To attempt to take oS with more
men than that aboard would be risking the lives of the crew as well as
those men who, already wounded at least once, had surely suffered
enough. I laid the law down flatly that there were to be no more cow-
boyish capers. We were there to rescue the wounded, thirty at a time,
not to show off at the risk of adding to the number of casualties.

As it was, we lost two planes at Hagaru, but we did not lose a man.
One pilot couldn't get his plane up — it was not overloaded — and it
crashed at the end of the runway. Miraculously, no one was injured.
The other plane developed engine trouble while still on the ground. Both
were destroyed to keep them from fallmg into the hands of the enemy.

The operation continued for six days, until there were no wounded
left at Hagaru; we evacuated a total of 4,689 casualties. We even flew
out hundreds of Chinese Communist prisoners. Some of them had
crawled into the camp on elbows and knees, their hands and feet frozen.

258 / OVER THE HUMP

Even after all the wounded were safe, however, the Marines still could
not move out of the Chosin plateau. Smith led his men through the most
bitter fighting, the six miles of hell to Koto-ri, but there he was stopped
again. Four miles south of Koto-ri the road crossed over a narrow gorge,
fifteen hundred feet deep. The Chinese had destroyed the bridge. Smith
took me up on my promise to do everythmg I could to aid him; he
requested a bridge. Nor, for this particular engmeering problem, would
just any bridge do. He specifically requested eight spans of an M-2
treadway bridge, complete with plywood planking. Four spans would be
enough to do the job, but he asked for eight to make sure. If he'd wanted
sixteen, I would have attempted to get them to hhn.

Landing in that area was out of the question; the spans would have
to be dropped. We flew in specialists from Japan to Yonpo to package
the huge spans; when prepared for the drop, each weig^ied two tons.
One trial drop was made with six personnel parachutes. They could not
hold the span, and it was damaged beyond repair on landing. There was
no more time for further experimentation. For the real drop, two huge
parachutes, each forty-eight feet in diameter, were secured to each span,
one at each end. They were loaded on rollers, one to a plane, along
with a crew of kickers. At an altitude of only eight hundred feet over
the designated area the kickers pushed the heavy spans out. The huge
chutes took hold. One span was dropped over enemy-held territory, and
another was damaged, but six arrived in perfect condition. The bridge
was built, and Smith's Marines and the renmants of the Seventh Division
marched and drove then- vehicles across it. Twenty thousand men fought
their way out to safety.

The Combat Cargo Command was busy on the west side of the
Korean peninsula too during those hectic days. Although the situation
there was not marked by the desperation caused by the encirclement
at Hagaru-ri, it was nevertheless critical. On December 5, the Eighth
Army suddenly decided to empty every military hospital in Korea lest
the wounded fall into the hands of the advancing Chinese. On that day,
C-54's of the 801st Medical Air Evacuation Squadron evacuated more
than four thousand patients to the safety of Japan.

After my visit with General Smith I flew back to Yonpo, and from
there proceeded across the peninsula to our Sinanju airfield on the west
coast Eddie Guilbert was there. A helicopter flew me to I Corps head-

Korea / 259

quarters, and then on to Division headquarters. I wanted to get the feel
of the operation. I intended to proceed on to Tokyo, and I wanted to
be able to give a clear report on the situation.

At the division level I found confusion and a severe shortage of sup-
plies, but no panic. The feeling was that the Chinese were rolling down
upon us in great waves of manpower. We could mow them down if we
had sufl&cient guns and ammunition — ^but we didn't have sufficient guns
and ammunition. At Corps I was told the story of the commander of a
field artillery battery overlooking a narrow valley leading down out of
the mountains. The captain called in excitedly over the field telephone
to say that a Chinese force was proceeding in mobs down the valley.
He opened fire, and called in to report that he could see his shells land-
ing in their midst. Still they came, and still the slaughter continued. The
captain kept up a running, excited, blow-by-blow account. And then,
suddenly, the line went dead. The entke battery had simply been
engulfed.

No one had time to pass on to higher headquarters what he needed.
What were the requirements, I asked, and the answer was: Everything —
particularly rations, ammunition, and warm clothing. From Corps head-
quarters I flew to headquarters of the Eighth Army at Pyongyang, and
went in to see General Walker. He looked tense, incredulous; the way
you'd expect an American general about to order a retreat to look. I
thought of my planes ordered by MacArthur to assist in the evacuation
of the X Corps from Hungnam; I thought of the planes moving elements
of the Fifth Air Force from Yonpo back to Taegu. There was little air-
lift left for Walker.

"We have considerably more airlift than you are getting," I admitted
to him, "but it is working for Partridge and Almond. If you think your
need is greater, I could ask Tokyo to assign it to you. I could bring you
two thousand tons a day."

He shook his head. "No," he said, "ifs too late. It looks like we're
going to have to pull south."

I left his headquarters dispirited. Here we had plenty of planes, enough
to do all three jobs, but not enough parts and not enough crews to utilize
them to even near their full capacity. I knew that my personnel, both
flight crews and maintenance crews, were driving themselves to the limit.

260 / OVER THE MUMP

beyond the limit. But it wasn't enough, and because it wasn't enough,
Americans were being killed by those damned Chinese.

The rules on how these planes would be used had been made months
and even years before, when the parts for the planes had been origmally
purchased. If MATS had not been so sorely cut back during that period
just prior to the war, in those months between the Berlin Airlift and
Korea, we could have tripled our delivery of supplies and men to the
Eighth Army. K I had had the same force in Korea that I had in the
last several months of the Berlin Airlift, I could have, during the preced-
ing month, built up the Eighth Army to sufficient strength to have held
the Chmese north of the Chongchon River. Instead Americans were
retreating and dying.

These planes were good planes, capable of ten-to-twelve-hours-a-day
usage, but the parts and supplies to keep them going could not be pro-
duced from a factory overnight. The old story — economy. Further, in-
stead of three full crews per C-119 plane, we had one. And so we were
held to three hours daily usage. The real problem was with the logis-
ticians. Few service logisticians had ever seen an airlift in combat; they
did not understand its tremendous potential, its ability to replace surface
transportation on the battlefield. Airlift had not been planned, either in
Washington months before, when parts and crews should have been
ordered, or even in Tokyo as late as August, just prior to the Inchon
invasion. Now every commander wanted it, more and more of it, and
it just wasn't there. The ones who wanted it the most were those who
had planned for it the least.

In the ensuing military action, the First Cavalry Division, with attached
English, Australian, and Turkish forces, provided a gallant and masterful
delaying action all the way down that side of the peninsula, enabling
the rest of the Army to pull back with some semblance of order. Now
from the big base camps at Seoul, Yonpo, Inchon, and even Pyongyang,
we began the evacuation of supplies, moxmtains of them, back within
the old Pusan perimeter and even to Japan. Although these supplies
were not the critical ones needed at the fronts by our slowly retiring
forces, they were important for a sustained war. It was a reverse airlift,
operating day and night without cessation. In addition to quantities of
equipment and personnel of both Eighth Army and X Corps, we also
continued the movement of the Fifth Air Force units to the comparative

Korea / 261

safety of South Korea. Without airlift all of this equipment might well
have fallen into the hands of the Chinese Communists. Its money value
ran into the millions, but its military value was even greater, for if the
Conmumists had been able to capture it, they might have pushed right
on down to the end of the peninsula. As it was, when the Chinese outran
their own supply lines, United Nations forces had the equipment, the
supplies, and the will to turn right around and take the offensive again.

In this regard, as I reported later to General Stratemeyer, there was
evidence to believe that the Eighth Army could have held longer at the
Chongchon River, seventy miles soutii of the Yalu, or, at worst, retired in
considerably better order. The primary factor influencing the decision to
withdraw across the Chongchon was the knowledge that the forces there
could not be supplied. Had this campaign been air-logistically planned,
had we the crews and parts, we could have given them all the supplies
they needed by airlift. Would the pell-mell retreat down the peninsula
have then been necessary?

Over and over again, on the Hump, in Korea, I saw higher head-
quarters pour money, materiel, and manpower down the endless drain
of construction and reparation of facilities for surface transportation
when a fraction of that cost would have enabled ah: transport to do the
same job better. To the fantastic waste of the Burma Road, which never
delivered more than a trickle of the supplies to China, add all the similar
expenditures in Korea — ^the reconstruction of entire harbors, the con-
stant reparation of roads, the repeated cr^cle of rebuilding of railroads
and bridges and tunnels — only to destroy them again. If but a percentage
of this effort had been put into airdrome construction in Korea (with the
added proviso of full utilization of our planes), mstead of the thousand
tons we delivered a day we could have approached the eight thousand
tons we carried without dilBBiculty into Berlin. This would have been more
than adequate to furnish the supply requirements of all United Natibns
forces — aground and air — in Korea, even against the Chinese Conmiunists.

Over and over again I have seen planners place all their logistic eggs
in one basket — surface transpcMtation — only to find, as at Inchon, that
one underestimated obstruction, such as the thirty-one-foot tide, was
slowing down the whole operation. Despite the historical success of the
Ferrying Command, the Himalayan Airlift and Berlin, aur transport con-
tinued to be ignored. One of the most pitifully tragic examples occurred

262 / OVER THE HUMP

at Seoul during the retreat of the Eighth Army. Rumors of Chinese
torture and butchery spread throughout the city. The directors of a group
of orphanages in Seoul became fearful that if the children remained in
the city they might be hurt or killed in the fighting, starve from lack of
attention, or even be murdered by the Chmese soldiers. They made
arrangements for a ship to evacuate a thousand children or more. The
United States Army furnished trucks to take the children to Inchon
harbor, but the boat did not appear. For days the children, many of them
infants, waited in vain on the open wharves in zero weather, without
adequate food, shelter, or clothing. Finally someone thought of auplanes;
an appeal was made to the chaplam of the Fifth Air Force, and it was
quickly passed along to me.

I ordered twelve C-54's to proceed to Kimpo immediately with flight
nurses and technicians aboard. The children arrived from Inchon at
about the same time, in open trucks. They were terribly undernourished
and suffering from the extreme cold. Many, particularly the infants, were
on the verge of death from exposure. Our people wrapped the children
in blankets, and did everything they could to ease their suffering. The
only food available was m the flight lunches; Vm sure that not one morsel
passed the lips of Air Force personnel.

When the planes arrived at their destination, the island of Chejudo
south of Korea, where arrangements had been made to receive the chil-
dren, for many it was too late. But the great majority recovered. The
Skty-first Troop Carrier adopted all the children, raised money for a new
orphanage, and flew in a planeload of presents and Santa Claus on
Christmas Day. For most of the children the story ended happily.

If only someone had thought of auplanes sooner, it could have ended
happily for all.

With the new year, the fortunes of that strange war agam changed
abruptly. Chinese columns streaming openly down through the penin-
sula made excellent targets, and the Fifth Air Force proceeded to anni-
hilate them. On one day the Fifth's airmen estimated that they had killed
eight thousand of the enemy. Now the Cargo Combat Command began
returning men and material to Korea. Throughout the entfare United
Nations military establishment it was now clear that the Chinese had
thrown their best armies at us, and though they had taken most of Korea,
the price they had paid in hundreds of thousands of casualties of their

Korea / 263

finest troops added up to a bitter defeat Our forces assiuned the offen-
sive again, and the Chinese withdrew.

My *'two or three months" m Korea had stretched into six months,
six exciting and demanding months. The Combat Cargo Conmiand was
now a smoothly fmictioning operation. Brigadier General John P. Hene-
bry, a young reserve oflScer from Chicago, had proved himself highly
capable, and on February 8, 1951, 1 turned the command over to him.
My last action was writing an eleven-page report in the form of a letter
to my good friend and boss, General Stratemeyer.

In this report I reviewed the ah: logistics, pomting out that air trans-
portation had proved itself to be a major element in the military opera-
tion. It had contributed substantially to the success of the Inchon
landings, the Eighth Army's race from Pusan to the Yalu, the 187th
Airborne Regiment's assault on Sukchon and Sxmchon, the deploy-
ment of the Fifth Air Force units in the fall, the withdrawal of the
Marines from the Chosin Reservok, the withdrawal of the entire X Corps
from Hamhung to Pusan, the retreat of the Eighth Army, and finally
the begiiming of the new advance through Stiwon.

"These highlights from our operations,** I said, "certainly reajBarm
the tremendous role air transportation can play and, as in the present
conflict, must play if a successful campaign is to be insured."

But, I continued, the vital role of air transportation is too often over-
looked. In the past air transportation had been made available for logis-
tical support by chance rather than by plan. "Air transportation must
take its proper place in the military family and must be considered and
planned for as necessary to support a given campaign under a given set
of circumstances. It should be an integral part of the over-all transporta-
tion system. We must plan for it to do the job for which it is best suited
such as evacuation of medical patients; movement of critical items of
supply and equipment; fast deployment of forces; movement of all the
expensive and important material to avoid wasteful stockpiling of these
materials, air supply of isolated units."

Several operations in Korea pointed out the necessity for more than
one type of transport akcraft to support combat operations. Without
the C-47 it would have been impossible to evacuate the five thousand
casualties from the Chosin Reservoir. Without the C-119, heavy equip-
ment such as six-by-six cargo trucks and 105 mm. howitzers could not

264 / OVER THE HUMP

have been moved. A long-range, heavy-lift akcraft for world-wide opera-
tions was also vital.

I recommended greater quantities of trained aviation engineers for
the expansion and construction of airfields to meet air transportation
requirements.

I also pointed out that had we been able to get nine hours utilization
out of all of our planes, we could have done the same jobs with a third
of those we actually had in use. I recommended the increase of personnel
m air transport units m order to achieve a greater efficiency of operation
by increasing the daily utilization of aircraft. This alone would cut the
aircraft reqmrement in the Air Force and would reduce the ton-mile cost
by a very appreciable amount.

I could not help but put in a blow for consolidation of air transport.
There was not sufficient transport aircraft available to handle our total
au-lift requirements throughout the world, and it was clearly indicated
that this condition would exist well into the future. The only way to use
all available air transportation to the maxunum extent possible would
be by integrating all air transportation into one organization which
would have the mission of standardizing equipment, units, and techniques.

These are but sketchy condensations of a few points of several elab-
orated upon m my report. But they should give some indication of the
extent of the proving ground in combat air transportation that was Korea.

CHAPTER VII

USAFE

Sometimes, on long night flights, lulled by the sense of secu-
rity that comes from the steady drone of the four powerful engines and
soothed by the famt luminescence of the instrument panel, the men flying
these big planes get in an introspective, philosophical mood. Many a
nigtit Tve gone forward to relieve the pilot or copilot or perhaps just to
visit, and have heard them discuss the same subject, the difference be-
tween aur-transport pilots and combat pilots, as we flew smoothly on
under the bright stars. One night the discussion was particularly interest-
mg, for one of the men had himself been a combat pilot, and an heroic
one, before coming into air transport.

"You develop a different philosophy as a transport pilot,'* he said.
"You think of the constructive force of aviation. The transport pilot goes
all over the world, and he can't help but become interested in the people
of other countries, their customs, and their problems. Transport pilots
are the most cosmopolitan group in the service."

These particular attributes of the transport pilot proved of great value
during my tenure as commander of United States Air Forces in Europe
for the four years of the command's greatest expansion, and the expan-
sion of the Air Forces of NATO. Though this book is primarily devoted
to air transport, I believe it fitting to devote a few pages here to show
what can be done within a command when the staff is alert, responsive
to new ideas and situations, and eager to think boldly, both as individuals
and as members of the team. For certainly some of the problems we
faced in USAFE did not have their solution neatly filed away in text-
books or training manuals.

Just five years after I had taken over the Berlia Airlift, under the
occasionally chafing supervision of USAFE, I found myself back in

265

266 / OVER THE HUMP

Wiesbaden as its conunander. General Lauris Norstad, who was then
with NATO in Europe, asked for my assignment there. Of course I was
delighted— it was always such a pleasure to work for him, or with hun—
and then to be in Europe too would be a great challenge. When Larry
commanded, he gave straightforward durections, and I can say now, years
later, that never did he interfere except to give advice or to help. He
knew that there were many ways to do a job, and he expected the job
to be finished efficiently; the manner in which it was done, he felt, was
the commander's prerogative. He had belief in those he had selected;
naturally a man would work his arms off for such a boss.

The scope of the job had become enormous, far greater that I had
imagined even after my extensive briefings in the Pentagon. No longer
was it just the United States Aii Forces occupying Germany. The name
of the command itself is a misnomer; the United States Aur Forces in
Europe mcludes not only Western Europe, but also North Africa and
the countries around the Mediterranean Basin, and extends through the
Middle East to Saudi Arabia and on to Pakistan. In many of these coun-
tries we had large concentrations of troops and planes on several air
bases.

The job of the commander and his staff, thus my primary job, was
to insure the proper state of trainmg of these troops in aU then: different
and sometimes peculiar training requirements and to achieve and hold
the maximum combat readiness of every plane, gun, missile, and man.
We also had to support with supplies and equipment much of the arsenal
of Mrcraft and guns of our NATO Allied Forces and the Mutual Defense
Assistance Program (MDAP) countries, who were not part of NATO.
But in all countries the same problems existed to some degree.

In every country in which we were Hving and working, our relation-
ships with our hosts were far from the cordiality one might expect from
our contributions to the economy of the country involved. Yet many of
these countries advertised heavily in American pubUcations, seeking
tourist trade and travel. In France, for example, in one of the years I was
commanding USAFE, American tourists spent $72,000,000 a year. The
An: Force was spending almost double that in construction and offshore
procurements, while our troops and then: families were spending $65,-
000,000 a year for French goods and services. In other countries it was
the same story; in the United Kingdom our Air Force expenditures

USAFE / 267

totaled about $260,000,000, American tourists, $75,000,000. In all of
Europe and the African areas the Air Force total was $658,000,000
spent, while the American tourists' figure was $282,000,000. Thus
tourism, so highly touted and cultivated, was almost small potatoes when
compared to defense spending overseas. Europe was still struggling out
of the shambles and debris of the war that had ended ten years pre-
viously. This extra foreign exchange we provided went far to put them
on their feet and, incidentally, to make them the booming countries most
of them are today.

Despite all this, as I traveled through the many different countries
comprising my command, I was constantly seeing evidence of dislike,
even enmity, for us on the part of the local people. There were signs
scribbled on the walls saying, "Yankee Go Home." Occasionally we'd
find our tires slashed, or cars scratched or smeared with paint Constant
reports of individual fighting between airmen and the local people crossed
my desk. Just walking down the street, I'd be conscious of sour looks in
my direction, and frequently in stores sales people would ignore us com-
pletely. We didn't want to be where we weren't liked or wanted, yet it
was imperative that we remain in Western Europe. Much of the con-
tinent was still in rums. We were the only people with the strength and
the arms to defend the free world. Still, we needed friends. We needed
allies. Though there were tens of thousands of us, equipped with hun-
dreds of the latest bombers and fighters, we were nevertheless but a
small minority in the countries in which we were stationed. We needed
the help of the local people, their recognition, their understanding. And
I also thought that we should paint a proper picture of America for them.
Those of us in our country's service should make a particular effort to
show America and Americans as not merely rich and powerful, but
friendly and trustworthy and likable.

I knew that I and a few staff officers could hardly come up with all
the answers to these perplexing problems in a few minutes' time, so I
established a community relations council at headquarters to look at
the problems and work up solutions. Later a similar council was set up
at each level of conmiand, and each base had its own coxmcil. The pro-
gram grew gradually through the weeks and months as it was constantly
being revised and made more comprehensive. It was an evolutionary
thing. It was obvious that if we were to get anywhere in Europe, we

268 / OVER THE HUMP

needed good community relations, and I made it the policy of the com-
mand to strive for this goal.

We had definite problems to overcome. Our people were livmg in
strange lands, with insufficient knowledge not only about the language
of our host countries, with the exception of Great Britam, but also
insufficient knowledge about tiie customs and traditions of the peoples
with whom we were livmg. To some of our personnel the differences
added up to a stimulant to greater understanding, but unfortunately the
great majority of our people were inhibited or antagonized by these
differences. Considering tiie sadly lackmg fluency m foreign languages
of most of us Americans, there was littie association between my people
and the local population, amongst whom we lived, other than the lower
kmd which occurred m tiie cheap bistros and beerhalls. There was none
of that carefree contact which we accept without question in the United
States. Ignorance of local customs resulted in occasional violations of
tiie laws of tiie host countries, and the all-too-frequent violation of social
conventions.

After long discussion of the problems we faced, with suggestions for
tiieui remedy tossed in, I took tiie bull by tiie horns. "What all this adds
up to,'* I said, "is primarily a program of developmg personal contact
in harmonious surroundmgs between our people and the local people.
I think that if we can only get to see each other and know each other,
we will like each other. Now how are we going to go about this?"

First, we felt that it was necessary to prepare each individual as fully
as possible for his role as a guest in a far-off land. Too many of our
people were impatient and intolerant, many understandably so. Why
can't I get a decent house for my family to live in? Why won't the plumb-
ing work? Why are we so overcharged for our rents in these French
villages? Why can't these people speak English? Why can't they learn to
drive properly — or at least fix up their roads? Why do they cling to these
stupid customs?

And so we set about preparing orientation booklets which would
acquaint, at least to some degree, every man in the command with the
attitudes, customs, and culture of the land in which he was stationed.
Thus, to the GFs in England, our booklet pomted out that the British
are **more reserved in conduct than we are. Life on a small, densely

USAFE / 269

populated island has given them an added sense of value for privacy,
both their own and that of the other fellow."

In Turkey, we warned our personnel that criticism of the party in
power was far more serious than sunply a matter of taste — ^making a
derogatory statement about the president of Turkey was emphatically
against the law.

In Morocco, the USAFE pamphlet cautioned our personnel against
such a seemingly innocent universal custom as making a favorable com-
ment on a child to his parents. For in Morocco a great many of the
people believe that it is possible to put the "evil eye" on both humans
and on animals. When anyone, particularly a foreigner with blue eyes,
which are unusual in Morocco, not only looks at a child but actually
goes so far as to comment on what he sees, this, at least in the minds of
the Moroccans, can have tragic repercussions.

In Saudi Arabia, strange as it may seem, many of our young officers
and enlisted men had the opportunity to talk with prmces or even the
king. In some ways it is a very democratic country. Whenever I visited
with the king on business pertaining to the Dhahran Air Base, or just
socially, he always insisted that I bring along tiie officers and men of
my crew. Yet it was important that local customs be observed. Men wore
their hats indoors, even at table. At feasts or at quiet meals, we fre-
quentiy found no eating unplements of any kind, and ate with our fingers,
as did our hosts — ^but it was important to remember to use only the right
hand. Dogs should not be discussed, nor the Arab-Israeli problem. Nor
should a person cross his legs, thus showing the sole of his feet to the
man he was talking to.

One phase of our community relations program, therefore, was a vast
educational campaign in the cultures of our host countries. And because
of the natural turnover of any military service, this was a contmuing
program.

The use of motor vehicles was necessary to both our operations and
to our personnel who lived far from their bases. In most of the countries
in which our bases were located cyclists, people pushing carts, and
pedestrians were far more numerous than fellow drivers. It was extremely
important, therefore, for our drivers, as well as personnel and depend-
ents in their own personal automobUes, not only to know ^ad observe
the traffic laws of the land, but to have a sympathetic understanding of

270 / OVER THB HUMP

the problems of the people with whom we shared the roads. We inau-
gurated a traffic-accident prevention program which went further than
a mere posting of the rules and regulations. Our base newspapers were
exhorted to keep up with the trends in traffic safety and laws. Every
vehicle licensed to an American had to undergo a thorough inspection
and meet rigid safety requirements.

Perhaps the most commonsensical, down-to-earth provision of the
community relations program lay m the basic field of communications.
Too many of us were like the aurman who came home after an extended
tour in Europe to report that now he could say please in two foreign
languages— "bitter" and "silver plate." How could we possibly get along
with these people when we made so little effort to understand their lan-
guage? Personally, I found that whatever country I was in, the people
seemed to appreciate even my clumsiest efforts to speak with them in
their own language.

But where communications between individuals are inhibited by the
lack of a common language, personal contact remains primitive, com-
munity acceptance hangs in the balance, and commimity relations rest
vqpon uncertain foundations.

We did not attack the language barrier with half-hearted measures.
I initiated an "on-duty mandatory" language-study program for all
USAFE personnel. Every officer and enlisted man in my command was
required to take a course of thirty hours in the language of the country
in which he was stationed. We did not believe that these few hours could
do more than provide an introduction to the language — ^but with this
amount a man could ask for a match, ask his way, read a menu, and get
an inkling of what was printed in the local newspaper. And he had a
beginning on which he could build if he had the mind to do so. After
two years of this program, our figures showed a total of thirty-two thou-
sand students enrolled in classes representing ten languages: German,
French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Dutch, Greek,
and Turkish. The wives were also encouraged to learn the local language,
anid special classes, both day and evening, were provided for them.
Althougih I hardly became a fluent conversationalist in German, the
language I myself studied masmuch as my headquarters were in Wies-
baden, I believe that both my country and my command benefited from
the few German words and phrases I was able to employ when speaking

USAFE / 271

to gatherings both large and small on official occasions. Our hosts sin-
cerely appreciated that small effort.

We also had many children of Air Force personnel throughout the
conunand. In 1956, for example, we had seventeen thousand children
in fifQr-five elementary and eight high schools, with a staff of some eight
hundred teachers. Each of these pupils was studying the language of the
land in which his parents were stationed; first graders would begin with
twenty minutes of German, say, or French, three days a week. The
instruction period mcreased in both frequency and duration, until a high
school student was getting at least an hour a day.

Naturally, when a military mstitution is located near a community,
problems constantly arise. Each base, as I mentioned before, had its
commimity council, composed of such officials as the base commander,
chaplain, information services officer, provost marshal, and frequently
the base surgeon. These councils would meet with similar groups com-
posed of government officials and influential leaders from the neighbor-
ing communities. At first the two groups would get together only when
necessary to discuss specffic problems, but, I was delighted to learn, in
many localities the sessions proved to be so interesting, even enjoya:ble,
that purely social gatherings were frequently scheduled.

The success of the community councils encouraged us to make further
attempts to become a part of the community and to make friends. In
Germany, German-American clubs were organized, and I gave them a
new boost of support by entertaining them often in my Wiesbaden home.
On most Air Force bases there was a large sprinkling of professional
men — ^lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects. We organized professional
clubs so that our medical men could meet the local doctors, our engi-
neers, the local engineers. Rod-and-gun clubs proved especially success-
ful. Sportsmen have a certain kinship the world over, and members of
our rod-and-gun clubs soon were huntmg and fishing with the local
sportsmen. Our members were eager to co-operate with local conserva-
tion officials to help preserve wildlife; there were many occasions when
USAFE personnel worked side by side with local foresters supplying
forage for game, or stocking streams with fish. A basic function of the
club, of course, was to provide its members with information on the
laws and customs of the land, which were in many cases at great variance
with American customs.

272 / OVER THE HUMP

With encouragement from the top, soon there were clubs galore —
wives' dubs, camera clubs, square-dance clubs, dramatic clubs, chess
clubs. Our people met with the local people with mutual enrichment the
immediate goal, and many of us got to know each other a little bit better
in the process. As our familiarity grew, we began helping each other
more. Many a community athletic field in Europe has been leveled by
the heavy equipment usually found on an Air Force base, then used
jointly and together by community and air-base teams. In some areas,
USAFB units worked with the local police organizations, swapping the
latest methods and equipment. Local police were overjoyed at the oppor-
tunity to use our firing ranges. Our base fire fighters got together with
the local fire departments both to exchange information and to fight fires
on the base or in the community. All along, we were co-operating with
national governments in such widespread emergencies as that caused by
the terrible winter of 1956, when icy winds and snow swept down from
the Swiss Alps and covered most of Italy. The American Ambassador
to Italy, Clare Boothe Luce, requested the President of the United States
to provide emergency supplies for the ItaUan people, and USAFE
promptly inaugurated an airlift to Italy. In ten days, flying in the worst
conditions imaginable, the 322nd Au: Division airlifted 700,000 pounds
of equipment and supplies to Italy without an accident. The crews of the
airliEt were honored by the Italian government and were blessed by Pope
Pius during a special audience at the Vatican.

Important as were these major mercy" missions, however, I cannot
help but believe that the daily friendly co-operation between Air Force
personnel and our immediate neighbors in a dozen little ways contributed
just as much to mutual trust and friendship.

Probably the most exciting example of this was on the playing fields.
Unfortunately, when I took command of USAFE, we were making no
use whatsoever of athletics to establish contact with the local people,
either directly on the playing fields or m the stands. Though I thoroughly
enjoy the fine American games of football and baseball, they served no
purpose in the new community relations program, and actually tended
to deprive the majority of the men from participation in athletics. Out
of perhaps two or four thousand men on each base there would be a
nucleus of a score or more athletes — "gladiators" would be a better term
— ^who would do all the playing, all year round. The rest of us would sit

VSAFE / 273

in the stand and eat hot dogs and drmk soda pop and get fat while our
gladiators entertamed us on the field. And the local people, of course,
being unfamiliar with our forms of athletics, couldn't have cared less.

Those of us who had spent some time in Europe knew that soccer is
the great sport there, more popular than football or baseball in America.
We hadn't done too well in getting Europeans to play our games, so I
suggested that we try to play theirs. Even if we failed completely m
making friends through soccer, or, as was more likely, we'd get the socks
beaten oflE us, our men would still derive the benefit of exercise and
recreation. In soccer everybody plays; you can play it with three on a
side or twenty-three, and without expensive and complicated equipment.
I noticed that the only equipment the children of Europe seemed to
reqwre was the soccer ball — ^no uniforms, knee guards, special shoes, or
clothes. And further, you can get more exercise in five minutes in a
soccer game than a right fielder gets all afternoon. My enthusiasm for
soccer must not have been unique, for, given some encouragement, soon
thousands of airmen were playing the game all through the command.
Soccer teams from the local communities began scheduling games with
teams from the bases. They did usually beat us pretty badly at first, but
they were very decent about it, and the friendly get-togethers after the
game frequenfly made up for the lopsided scores. And we did not always
lose, either. All in all we had about two hundred soccer teams playing
regular schedules, and the best of them played the national teams of
Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Finland.

We were constanfly entertaining groups of children at the bases, of
course, particularly underprivileged kids and the forlorn, forgotten
imnates of orphanages. We'd give them a picnic, then show them over
the planes. Fortunately we didn't need to do all of these things by our-
selves. Help was received from philanthropic organizations and even
individuals. For example, Mrs. Jouett Shouse of Washington, D.C., who
had a great compassion for the underprivUeged children of Germany,
sponsored the German Youth Association. It supported a center for
some seven hundred German boys and girls on the Teinpelhof Air Base,
with all manner of vocational equipment. There were sewing machines
and thousands of yards of cloth sent from the States, fine photographic
equipment and film-processing rooms, drafting boards, woodworkmg
equipment, kitchen equipment, and a library. For sheer recreation there

274 / OVER THE HUMP

were several of the ever-popular Ping-pong tables. Youngsters whose
f amflies had at best two rooms for livmg found this a natural meeting
place. The adult direction was the best we could afford, and I know we
made many German friends through this worthy endeavor.

By far our biggest operation along these lines was the famous Kinder-
lift for the children of West Berlin. These poor kids really had it tough.
The only home thousands of them knew were the barracks-like buildings
occupied by scores of indigent and otherwise homeless families and
individuals. These children existed without knowmg the pleasures of
childhood, and my heart went out to them. Their faces seemed all the
same — ^pale from lack of sun, pinched from lack of food, wan from lack
of joy. They were truly prisoners of Conmiunism, condemned to exist-
ence in the rabbit warrens of the big city. They couldn't leave, for there
was a real danger that, should any of them visit the Communist-domi-
nated coimtryside around Berlm, they might be held as hostages.

One morning, among the many pieces of paper that came across my
desk was the suggestion that we transport these children by plane, over
the Communist territory west of the city, to homes and farms in free
Germany for a vacation. I approved it immediately. German Red Cross
workers rounded up the most woebegone children they could find for
the beginning of the program. Doctors and nurses worked overtune
giving the kids medical examinations to make sure they could stand the
trip. Volunteer workers m West Germany lined up homes with both
German and our ovm American service families where the unhappy
little ones would be welcome for the vacation period. My people, of
course, were lining up planes and pilots. This was to be a voluntary
service, and the men came forward without prodding. We accepted only
pilots with two thousand hours flight tune, and even then there was a
waiting list. One pilot stayed on two weeks after his tour of duty in
Europe had expired in order to make a Kinderlift flight.

That first day of the Kinderlift was something to remember. No one
who was there could ever possibly forget the sight of those children
stepping out of the Air Force buses at Tempelhof Airport. Their clothes
were clean but patched, and they carried their belongings in cardboard
boxes, even paper bags. Many were frightened to the point of tears,
but were reassured by chocolates and chewing gum and the smiles of
the Red Cross workers.

USAFE / 275

That first group set the pattern for all the groups to come. In the
planes leaving Berlin they were subdued and scared. When they arrived
at their vacation foster homes, they acted more like adults than children.
Then came the pathetic little letters home, describing in tones of wonder
the simple pastimes that many children take for granted — a splash in
river or pond, a ride in an automobile, seeing cows and horses and pigs,
or just bemg in quiet, open areas. In just a few weeks, a marvelous
change came over these children. Then: faces filled out and took on color.
They learned to laugh and play. As George Kent wrote in the Rmder^s
Digest:

Sometimes the change is enou^ to warrant recording as a med-
ical case history — like that of the little boy who stuttered. He had
no malformation of tongue or palate; he was just a miserable child.
But in his new home, near Wiesbaden, he played in a garden every
day and at dusk he watered the flowers, using a watermg can with
his name painted on it. His vacation mother, an affectionate German
housewife, hugged him and kissed him and told him over and over
what a fine fellow he was.

He stopped stuttering without being aware of it. And with his
clear speech came self-confidence and a desire to take part in all
that was going on. His own mother, listenmg to hun when he came
back, was too moved to speak.

Mother after mother reported, with somethmg akin to awe, that
her children were cured of the problems that had beset them. Some
even complained with pride that then: children, once utterly apa-
thetic, had now become mischievous little rogues.

All of our conununity relations work, so important in the over-all
picture, was strictly extracurricular. It did not interfere with our mission.
As for its costs, I believe that our savings through increased efficiency
more than paid for our humanitarian efforts.

When we had a chart and graph section going in headquarters, we
portrayed the many elements which indicated the daily degree of combat
effectiveness of each of our squadrons and bases. I became alarmed to
note that frequently as much as 20 per cent of our fleets of fighters and
bombers were out of commission because of the lack of critical parts;
occasionally this figure ran up to 50 per cent. These parts would fre-
quently be on requisition to our depots in Europe, at Ch&teauroux in

276 / OVER THE HUMP

France, Burtonwood in England, or Erding in Germany. Due to the
timewom practice of moving parts or items of supply by surface means
it would sometimes literaUy take months to get parts delivered from
Erding to a base m Turkey, say, or to Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. A study
revealed that, largely due to railroad and border problems, supplies fillmg
normal requisitions were in the pipeline from Chateauroux to Belgium
for 120 days.

Now while this serious situation in AOCP (airplane out of commis-
sion awaiting parts) of our combat fleet existed, I noted that many of
our troop carriers were sitting on the ramp at their home bases domg
nothing. As I have said before, one of my pet phobias is air transport
inactivity. I hate to see a transport airplane sitting around doing nothing
or boring holes in the sky practicing formation flymg. When I took com-
mand of USAFE, this was about all our troop carrier wings did.

On the one hand we had these transports idle or flying around empty,
while on the other we were facmg harassing problems in the logistic
support area of our combat types. Our theater inventory of spare parts
was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet vitally needed combat
planes were out of commission awaiting these parts — ^which were already
in Europe, but in the wrong place.

Once we saw the picture clearly, it was easy. We merely organized
the troop carrier wings into an air logistics service (ALS) and provided
a daily air service between the forty bases we had in Europe and Africa
and these in turn with the depots. After two months of operation, the
AOCP-rate began dropping, and soon it was down to 5 per cent. Before,
some 225 ships had been immobilized; now they were combat ready.
This amounted to three wings, at a cost of over a hundred million dollars
per wing — a substantial improvement in combat readiness or in money.

Within a year, the new ALS was carrying four thousand tons a month,
and most of this cargo was in critical or high-cost items; the savings were
tremendous. Our new airline also carried all our personnel between
bases, speedmg up our business. And finally, it handled our medical
evacuation service. Due to the shortage of medical specialists, equip-
ment, and facilities in Europe, it was greatly to our advantage to be
able to concentrate our specialists at a few centrally located hospitals.
Patients who could not be treated at the local base dispensaries were

USAFE / 277

airlifted to the hospitals, enabling us to give our personnel the finest
medical treatment in spite of the shortages.

We were also able to effect great savings in the use of indigenous
labor. All along in my military career, in India and China, on the Berlin
Airlift and in Japan, I had found that the use of the local people enabled
us to get the job done quicker at a lower cost. This was also true in the
territories covered by USAFE. We put more and more civilians to work
for us, Arabs and Pakistanis as well as Europeans. The successful use
of local labor alleviated the critical manpower shortage that existed
among service personnel and saved the United States the high cost of
transportmg, housing, and feeding the personnel they replaced. For ex-
ample, we estimated early that about nine thousand jobs, particularly
those in the building, maintenance, and clerical trades, could be per-
formed by indigenous personnel. The average salary of these people in
Germany, France, and England was fifteen hundred dollars per year,
while the GI, with his family support, cost the American taxpayers
about six thousand dollars. The over-all savmg to the United States in
this account alone was over forty million dollars annually. There is, of
course, the question of whether it is more to the national interest to pay
out this lesser sum, or to pay the additional sum to our defense budget
for American troops. From the humanitarian viewpoint, the money we
paid the local people not only helped them lead better lives, but flowed
on into the local conmiunities to improve the lot of many more of their
countrymen.

At the beginning I had found a morale problem among my own per-
sonnel. It was easy to see why. The command had mushroomed. When
the Berlin Airlift had ended, USAFE had dropped in strength of per-
sonnel and number of aurcraft until early 1950. Then NATO became
operative and the build-up of forces to resist any Conununist aggression
from the east got underway. When I took command, USAFE was already
the most powerful overseas tactical force of the United States Air Force,
with all the responsibilities of its complex mission, in co-operation with
our sister services and America's allies, of the mutual defense of the
free world.

One of the most obvious shortages of this great expansion was in
housing — chousing for the men with families as well as barracks for the
GFs. At some of the bases the facilities for the men were unspeakable,

278 / OVER THE HUMP

and the areas off base, where, generally, their families lived, were as
bad or worse. I particularly remember our base at Chlteauroux m
France. There was mud everywhere; construction had been \mderway
for two years. Most of the men were living in tents surrounded by mud,
with stinking latrines at the end of each line of tents. Some thousand men
lived m an old French hangar and another, older hangar served as the
only mess hall for six thousand people, including French civilian workers.
Morale at Chateauroux was where one would expect it.

In England I talked with men who traveled fifty miles twice each day
to find even a passable place to live with then: families. Many of our
personnel built shacks on the edge of the airdrome to avoid the long
ride; one of the chores awaiting them when they came home at the end
of the day was the emptying of latrine buckets. In France, if it wasn't
the long drive home over winding and narrow old roads, it was an extra
room in a French home or a cold-water garret apartment with a single
bulb on the end of a drop cord and a hand-stoked stove. Only in Ger-
many, where we had requisitioned housing from the German civilians
after the war, were our families passably comfortable.

What we needed first to alleviate this problem was money and imder-
standing from those who controlled the purse strings. Surveys were made
and requirements determined; they, plus urgent wkes, were sent to the
Pentagon. I sent Ray Towne out with camera crews to get a series of
pictures of the mud and squalor; he did such a good job that we referred
to the photographs he brought in as "our horror pictures." My staff and
I made mnumerable trips to the field and saw firsthand the actual condi-
tions, heard the experiences of the men and their wives. We prepared
special briefings and presented them, complete with horror pictures, to
everyone who came over from the States who would listen, and many
did. As an example, the Right Reverend Austm Pardue, Episcopal
Bishop of Pittsburgh, received a personal briefing on his trip to Europe,
and was then taken on an inspection tour of my bases in France. He
wrote to his diocese as follows:

There is no housing here for any of the men who have their fam-
ilies with them. Therefore, they are living in rented places and this
particular part of France is nothing but a series of woebegone little
towns. Hardly a family has mside plumbing or central heat. Thus,
many family problems and great dissatisfaction are created. Further-

USAFE / 279

more, costs go up and whfle the government makes extra allow-
ances, the people are not able to live with self-respect. The govern-
ment's austerity program has hit this base and, as I say, I marvel
at the morale and at the strength of character that I find in these
men, especially the officers.

Ah: Force headquarters m Washmgton, to whom these problems were
practically unknown, took cognizance and action. Department of Defense
headquarters got into the act and loosened the purse strmgs. And prog-
ress started. In Germany^ with German money representing occupation
cost or German defense funds, we built up complete American villages
as well as mdividual developments within German communities; for my
Air Force people alone almost nineteen thousand sets of married quar-
ters were built as well as brand-new bases complete with excellent bar-
racks. In all, during my four years we spent well over one billion dollars
in German funds for construction and supplies.

In England, American credits had accumulated for surplus agricul-
tural products which had and were bemg sent to that country; after long
negotiations we were able to convert these credit dollars into three thou-
sand sets of married quarters. As most of this nloney came from surplus
tobacco, the quarters were commonly referred to as "tobacco housing."

In France an arrangement was made by which the French built houses
on a rental guarantee program. Under its terms our government guar-
anteed 95 per cent occupancy for a housing unit at an ak base for, say,
seven years, with the housing reverting to the French at the end of that
period. The French both financed and constructed the buildings. Many
thousands of homes were built under this program in France, and also
in Morocco.

Of course all this took time. Even after the money had been found
and contracts signed, many men and their dependents were still living
in substandard housing. In the meantime I personally went to Harold
E. Talbott, then Secretary of the Air Force, and suggested that we
purchase trailers for an immediate alleviation of the housing shortage.
He responded handsomely with enough money to buy three thousand
trailers and the utilities for their installation. Soon we had trailers m
France, Turkey, Libya, and Morocco. There is now little question in
my mind but that the young American officer and enlisted man will do
everything he can to have his family with him regardless of conditions,

280 / OVER THE HUMP

short of war, and that this is the way his family would have it, too.
Few men go willingly to new assignments without their families; most
go bitterly .

Those who sponsor such operations as frequent six-month rotation
of combat units without families in times of peace are in my estiniation
contributing to the heavy exodus of our highly skilled and many of our
most promising young men from the services. Ways and means must
be taken to provide for families wherever troops are sent, with such
obvious exceptions as the far north or Antarctic. It can usually be done
when those in authority will try.

After four years as commander of USAFE, I was brought back to
serve in Washington at the Pentagon as Ak Force Deputy Chief of Staff
for Operations. During my last year, I don't think I saw one single
"Yankee Go Home" sign anywhere. When I left Germany, I had the
solace of knowing that my conununity relations program had helped
to break down coldness and hostility among the Germans and had
fostered friendships through the other European and African countries
hosting our Air Force families. This program has had violent ups and
downs with subsequent commanders, but it has, in time, proven its value
and some parts have become the accepted pattern. Personally I can't
say enough in favor of language study, participation in local sports, and
other forms of get togethers with the local people, for our servicemen.
Today Air Force men and families look forward to a tour of duty in
Europe.

CHAPTER VIII

MATS

O F ALL THE jobs in the Air Force, the one I wanted most was
the command of the MUitary Air Transport Service. Fortunately, from
my experience in this field, it was natural that I be assigned there. On
July 1, 1958, after a frustrating year for me in the Pentagon, Tommy
White, then Air Force Chief, sent me to Scott Air Force Base, to take
command of that fine, world-wide transport outfit I took command
of MATS.

And then all hell broke loose.

I do iiot believe that the American people are aware to this day of
the alarm and concern experienced by the leaders of our government
and the military establishment over the events of that summer and fall.
They began two weeks after I assumed command, when far away, in
the Middle East, Arab nationaUsts killed the king and premier of Iraq
and seized control of the government. The government of little Lebanon,
Iraq's neighbor on the Mediterranean, fearing an attempt on the part of
the Soviet Union and the United Arab Republic to overthrow the regime,
called on its ally, the United States, for assistance. Promise of aid was
immediately forthcoming. Within an hour after the decision was made,
MATS planes were airborne, headed for the European Theater. Before
the public had any inkling that there was grave danger of an eruption
in the Middle East, we were m action on a large scale. By the time
the decision of the President to land Marines in Lebanon was first
made public, thirty-six C-124's were on their way to Europe to form
a fleet of forty-eigiht Car^masters there. To us in MATS the inference
was obvious, dramatically so. Now, in the air age, it was the officers
and men and planes of air transport who were the first to swing into
action in an emergency.

281

282 / OVER THE HUMP

Even before the Marines disembarked from the vessels of the Sixth
Fleet in the Mediterranean, our planes had begun the constant cycle of
flights from Frankfurt to Beirut and Turkey and back again. Here in
America, special missions were set up to fly supplies and personnel direct
to the critical area.

While forty-eight of our C-124's were still committed to the Middle
East, another crisis broke. Artillery based on the Red Chinese mam-
land began shelling Quemoy and Matsu, two small islands of the Re-
public of China in the Formosa Strait. Once agam MATS proved its
capability as a force in bemg which required no rehearsals, no period
of mobilization, no declaration of a national emergency. A heavy
trans-Pacific airlift of hundreds of planes began delivering supplies
to Taiwan and the Philippines. In a special movement, under conditions
of maximum security, a full squadron of F-104 Star Fighters was
partially dismantled and loaded aboard big C-124's at Hamilton AFB,
then flown, complete with pilots, ground crews, and maintenance
equipment, to Formosa. With these supersonic jets, the composite air
strike force poised on Formosa became one of the fastest, hardest-
hitting an: task forces ever assembled. There is no question but that
these sleek fighters patrolling the Formosa Strait at speeds faster than
sound heavily influenced the Chinese Communists to call off the ex-
pected assault on the two little islands. The Chinese hadn't seen anything
like those planes before. Their sudden materialization out of nowhere
must have made the faces of Red intelligence officers even redder.

All during this period of double crisis our normal traffic continued.
We called upon the civil airlines for planes to help us, on a contract
basis. There was frenzied activity going on behind the scenes, but we
maintained regular service all over the world, with an average of some
thousand flights per month.

So impressive was this display of the swift-response capability of my
command that I wished I could have participated in either or both of
these operations in the field. The closest I got to either was the Opera-
tions room at my headquarters at Scott Field, from which both were
directed. Even then it was not possible for me to keep my fingers
directly on the pulse of the operation. While these two dramatic opera-
tions were actually in progress, I was engaged in another activity: I was
trying to save, protect, and maintain the very command which was

MATS / 283

doing such a spectacular and necessary job. For even in its shining
hour, MATS was under bitter and virulent attack.

It will probably strike the present reader as incredible, now that
the value of MATS has been recognized by Congress, the administration,
and the public in general, that m the years 1958-1961 a handful of us
were fighting for its life. Exactly how near the nation came to losing
this mighty force I could not ventxire to say, but it was certainly
dangerously close. Nor is the issue a matter of past history, better for-
gotten. Because of this neglect of our aurlift forces during the 1950's
America is weaker today than it should be, and further, this weakness,
though ameliorated by the emergency purchase of some "off-the-shelf"
planes, will continue at least through 1966.

From my position as deputy chief of staff for Operations for the
Air Forces, the position I held immediately prior to my taking command
of MATS, I had seen this situation developing. I had been called to
testify before committees of Congress on matters overlapping the con-
troversy. I knew that I was walking into a situation that might be un-
pleasant. Yet, trusting, I was sure that my position was the correct one,
and all I had to do was prove it to make everything all right. Little
did I realize the full extent and the bitterness of the opposition I was
facing when I went to MATS as conmiander-in-chief in 1958.

Perhaps, before going further, I'd better stop and give a clear picture
of the Military Air Transport Service, how it developed, what it is,
what it does, and what it would do should war come. It is this last,
MATS's D-Day mission, which is, of course, paramount.

I have had a personal involvement with MATS and its forerunners
from the very beginning. My old Ferrying Division had been the basic
division of the old Ah- Transport Command, and it was as commander
of the India-Chma Division of the ATC that I had commanded the
Hump. In 1948 I served MATS, the successor to ATC, as its deputy
commander, and both Berlin and Korea Airlifts, though not MATS
commands, were carried on largely by MATS planes and personnel.

When I returned to MATS as its commander, the operation main-
tained a system of a hundred thousand miles of air routes, always on
a wartime readiness basis. Its mission, by direction of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, is to provide airlift for the Department of Defense both
routinely and in emergency. In order to do this, its planes, crews, and

284 / OVER THE HUMP

ground personnel must be in a constant state of readiness. In accordance
with United States national strategy, therefore, MATS moves men,
weapons, and materiel within the United States and from one continent
to another. It must be able to furnish immediate resupply for both
bombers and missile bases of the Strategic Air Command. It must also
be able to move immediately to transport troops of the United States
Strike Command (STRICOM).

The great majority of MATS operations are thus in the area of
Strategic Airlift. Some fifty thousand people, out of a total MATS
strength of about one hundred thousand, and half of the one thousand-
odd aircraft in MATS inventory, are assigned to ahrlift operations.

To perform its missions, MATS trains assiduously, every day, flying
the same routes that it would fly m wartime. The mission that MATS
would fly in combat is exactly the same mission that has been flown
day in and day out in the never-ending, exhaustive program of supply-
ing our overseas forces. The routes are not strange, the crews are not
unfamiliar with conditions, procedures, facilities, and bases along them.
In an explosive world situation, therefore, MATS does not shift mto
a new, different operation, but simply steps up the tempo of what it
has been doing all along.

MATS also operates three technical services: the Air Photograph
and Charting Service, the Air Weather Service, and the Air Rescue
Service, which has as its primary mission the rescue of downed aumen.
These services have a combined strength of some fifty thousand person-
nel. Each is a story in itself.

Another MATS function is the aeromedical evacuation operation,
AIREVAC. A special aircraft, the C-131 Samaritan, with medical
facilities not found on regular cargo or passenger aircraft, is used for
this purpose. The program serves the Army, Navy, Ak Force, and
other governmental agencies. It can brmg a patient from anywhere in
the world to a designated hospital in the United States, normally within
one day. In domestic operation these "flying hospital wards" take off
or land every thirty-seven mmutes, every day.

Another service which MATS performs, and which only MATS can
perform, is the movement of all missiles, large and small. It has the
only aircraft in the world large enough to carry big operational mis-
siles, such as the Atlas and Titan. The smoothness of ak transporta-

MATS / 285

tion, as compared to the shaking and banging of rail or truck, is essen-
tial in the case of a delicately machined missile.

Another special cargo MATS carries includes Very Important Persons
and high-priority diplomatic materials. A squadron operating out of
the Washington area provides specially equipped passenger planes for
the use of the President, other high-ranking government ofladak, and
visiting notables.

For additiOTial planes and personnel, MATS can call upon the civil
airlines. Together witihi the airlmes and the Defense Air Transport
Agency, MATS has selected and earmarked some 225 civil airplanes
for this purpose and, through contracts, has modified and equipped
these planes so that they can fly overseas missions as augmentation.
They comprise the Civil Reserve Air Fleet or CRAF. The primary
purpose of CRAF is to render direct support to our operations in
time of war. As an incentive to the airlines to participate in this program,
which represents an appreciable amount of business, peacetime aurlift
contracts are normally awarded only to airlines with CRAF contracts.
By calling on many of these civil aircraft to replace our military planes
for routine runs, we were able to carry out the intense demands created
by the Lebanon and Formosa Straits incidents. At that tune MATS was
buying airlift from the carriers at the rate of eighty million dollars
annually.

But the CRAF program was by no means perfect. These planes were
not always unmediately available, as civilian airlmes could hardly be
expected to shift their operations as a military organization must At
peak periods of commercial transport activity, such as the summer
vacation season, some of the airlines were loath to release to us on a
low-bid basis planes which could be used for the lucrative passenger
service. Further, though it was not so specified m the individual con-
tracts, common sense and experience indicated that these planes would
be most useful only in our most routine operations. In the Korean
War, for example, the airlift between the United States and Japan was
effectively bolstered by civilian planes and personnel, but the real
Korean airlift, from bases m Japan into Korea, where people were
shootmg at each other, was strictly military.

Over the years MATS has been engaged in one headline airlift after
another, many of them in the humanitarian category to relieve distress

286 / OVER THE HUMP

and suffering. Here are a few, chosen to show the diversity of operations.

In 1952, the Magic Carpet Aurlift moved four thousand stranded
Moslem pilgrims from Beirut, Lebanon, to Jidda, Saudi Arabia, which
was the nearest ahrport to their destmation, the Holy City of Mecca.

Two years later, Wounded Warrior Airlift evacuated five hundred
French troops, wounded in the batde of Dien Bien Phu, from Japan
home to France.

Safe Haven Airlift, 1956-1957, transported 14,263 Hungarian refu-
gees, victims of Communist tyranny, to the United States.

When earthquakes in Chile literally reshaped parts of that country,
MATS flew seventy-seven mercy missions to Chile m the longest airlift
flown up to that time. Tons of clothmg, food, helicopters, and medical
supplies including two complete Army field hospitals were flown in to
aid the homeless millions.

Strategic airlifts over the years have mcluded such well-known opera-
tions as Korea, Suez, Lebanon, and Formosa. Perhaps less publicized
was the airlifting of Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles and their
equipment (with five hundred transatlantic trips) from California to
Engjand. In 1960 the Congo Airlift, which supplanted the Chilean Air-
lift as the world's longest, began. Operated for the United Nations, it has
utilized a peak number of sixty aircraft along the five-thousand-mile route
from Europe to Leopoldville, taking in over thirty-five thousand troops
and some ten thousand tons of equipment to aid the UN in preventing
all-out war in the Congo.

In contrast to this equatorial airlift, year after year MATS has con-
tinued "Operation Deep Freeze," supplying bases deep m Antarctica
with everything from bulldozers to fresh eggs by air drop, as well as
landing on floating ice fields in the Arctic to supply our weather stations
there.

These missions are directly related to the primary mission of MATS,
to maintain D-Day readmess. Only through actual performance can
MATS remain on its toes. Air transport men have a saying: "You can't
can airlift/* Day-to-day missions fulfill a double need: The specific mis-
sion itself, and the traming for D-Day readiness. In comparison to most
military units, from the Infantry to the Strategic Air Command, which
can only practice their D-Day mission, MATS must practice and perform
at the same tune. It seems only reasonable to me that the entire nation

MATS / 287

benefits by this duality, and that MATS shoidd be encouraged and spon-
sored in this complex and beneficial operation.

And yet, when I took command of MATS in 1958, it was being
squeezed out of business. Two powerful forces were exerting pressure.
One was within the military establishment itself, the other was within the
civilian airline industry.

The pressure agamst MATS from the military establishment reflected
the Eisenhower Administration's overemphasis on the massive-retaliation
principle and the resulting reluctance to allocate large funds to any
branch of the military but the deterrent forces. The reason for fliis deter-
mmation to place an unreasonable proportion of our military resources
into one basket was based not only upon military postulates, but on
practical politics as well. The Eisenhower Administration had pledged
itself to hold down taxes, and the emphasis on massive retaliation with
nuclear weapons fit in weU with the national economy drive. Expensive
as nuclear bombs and the capability to deliver them may appear, nuclear
forces are cheaper to establish and maintain than forces adequately
balanced between nudear and conventional capability. Even the slogan,
"Big Bang for a Buck,'' fit in.

It was on the Army and the conventional commands of the Air Force
that the economy ax fell hardest. It was of this period that General
Matthew B. Ridgway wrote, after his retirement: "...In my job as
chief of staff, I say m all earnestness and sincerity that I felt that I was
being called upon to destroy, rather than to build, a fighting force on
which rested the world's best hope for peace. Day by day, by order of
my civilian superiors I was called upon to take action and to advocate
policies which, if continued, in my judgment would eventually so weaken
the United States army that it could no longer serve as an effective in-
strument of national policy . .

In my opinion, then and now, our forces should be balanced. Cer-
tainly our deterrent force, which, prior to the development of the Navy's
submarine-borne Polaris missiles, was comprised entkely of the Strategic
Air Command, was everything its boosters said it was. It was a sword
of Damocles poised over the head of any aggressor. It could obliterate
the Soviet Union, Communist China, or both, from the face of the earth.
The free world needed its deterrent force then, it still needs it now, and
will continue to need it in the foreseeable future. It has saved the world

288 / OVER THE HUMP

from general war and the annihilation of millions. I certainly have only
praise for SAC, and have always co-operated with it to the fullest extent.
Just prior to takmg conmiand of MATS, for example, I had, as Chief
of Operations of the United States Air Force, worked closely with the
B-70 program. I became familiar with it and was pleased to see North
American Aircraft get the contracts to research and develop this super-
sonic plane designed primarily for SAC.

But all this time the world was undergomg crises, international dis-
turbances, and small wars. The "Big Bang" theory just doesn't seem to
work in these brush-fire engagements. We did not use our nuclear power
in Korea, nor Lebanon, nor the Formosa Strait, nor Laos. It is of little
use to us in recurrmg crises over Berlin, Cuba, or Vietnam. Thus,
although we had the potential to wipe our enemy off the face of the
earth in the event of general war, we could, in the meantime, through
lack of conventional forces, see one small part of the free world after
another be whittled off in small wars.

I knew from personal experience the difficulties and delays we en-
countered in Berlin and Korea through shortage of airlift. Fortunately,
we were finally able in both situations to muster enough aircraft and
persormel to do the job. Suppose our sturdy old wartime planes had
not stood up as well, and we had been forced to imdertake either or both
campaigns without adequate aircraft? The answer to that question had
been demonstrated in 1956, when the British, French, and Israelis
attempted to seize the Suez Canal to prevent its nationalization by Egypt.
From a strictly military point of view, if the British had had adequate
airlift, they would have been able to move their troops from England
and staging areas on the island of Cyprus quickly and in sufficient
strength to Egypt and the Suez Canal to be victorious. As it was, it took
many, many days to transport the troops by ship, and before the objec-
tives could be taken, the British were persuaded by the United States
to call off the war. With adequate airlift, the operation could have be-
come a fait accompli before United States intervention.

Thus, within two years, as commander of USAFE in Europe in 1956
and as commander of MATS in 1958, 1 had seen one campaign— Suez
— ^fail through lack of ahrlift, two — ^Lebanon and Formosa — ^succeed
througji sufficiency of airlift. What perturbed me was that our airlift
capacity, through normal attrition and obsolescence, was decreasing.

MATS / 289

There was no long-range program whatsoever in existence to develop
and build modem planes to augment this capacity. There was no stop^
gap program in existence to replace our aging equipment.

On the contrary, MATS was about to lose its 1 10 troop carriers, fully
half the entire fleet of €-124'$. A program to assign these planes to the
Tactical Air Command had already been approved up the Ime and was
awaiting final action by the Chief of Staff. This would have meant a
considerable downgrading of MATS, but worse, for the country, a dissi-
pation and dispersal of air transport forces which were already in crit-
ically short supply. This drastic proposal greeted me the day I took
coromand of MATS. I managed to stall final action for a time. Later,
during the Lebanon and Formosa crises, as we scraped up planes and
dispatched them east and west across two oceans, the thought of how
close we had come to losing those planes sent cold chills up our backs.
Could we have carried out both operations with only half the planes
available to us?

On one of my numerous trips to Washington during that hectic period
I went in to see General Thomas White, Chief of Staff, USAF, and made
a personal plea to him to review the decision to split MATS' fleet of
C-124's with TAC. I asked him to reconsider the entire question of our
airlift policy.

"Frankly, Tommy," I said, "on the basis of my experience with air
transport I firmly believe that this is the wrong way to go."

He listened attentively as I cited the confusion which would have
developed had the planes already been transferred, with the overlapping
of effort and responsibility that would have resulted from two commands
attempting to do the same job. I had an excellent example of this. After
much pleading I had been loaned some C-124's and crews by the Air
Materiel Conunand. They were loaded and dispatched across the Pacific.
However, as they carried only one crew— ours were sent out with two
crews — ^they had to stop periodically en route for crew rest. They were
also of a slightly different model, and those which needed maintenance
en route could not get all the particular parts required. What was a nor-
mal thirty-six-hour trip lasted six days. Last-minute co-ordination just
doesn't work.

"All right, Bill, you've sold me," General White said when I finished.
"I'll rescind the order. You can keep your planes."

290 / OVER THE HUMP

But this was only one battle won. The over-all situation remained the
same. In the Administration, in the Department of Defense, in the Jomt
Chiefs of Staff, the advocates of the Big Bang philosophy were firmly in
control So mundane an area as air transport was relegated to the bottom
of the priority list on grounds of both grand strategy and economy. My
own views were in variance with some of those on the air staff. I felt
that we should be equipped and prepared to deal with the small wars and
international disturbances in a manner short of dropping the bomb. As
for economy, I was positive that money spent for airlift would actually
be far less in the long run. We had proved over and over again the
economy and advantages of transporting expensive and high-priority
military materiel by air. The case for air transport of military personnel
was even stronger.

Today, vidth STRICOM, a potentially superb force actually in being
witiiin tile continental United States, it may be difficult to remember
that in 1958 such an idea was anathema, both militarily and politically.
It was clear to me that, as affairs stood then, it was gomg to be difficult
to maintain MATS as it was, let alone bring in the sweeping, billion-
dollar improvements necessary to enable us to do the job right.

But all along tiiis military pressure was not directed against MATS so
much as for the ahnost exclusive program of massive retaliation. The
active, all-out assault on military air transport came from another quar-
ter, the Air Transport Association and some of the airlmes it represented.

The airline mdustry in 1958 was not too well off. The dream of a
great air transportation boom m both passengers and cargo bom in
World War II had not been fulfilled. As jet-powered planes became
available, the airlmes could see more problems on the horizon. The
new jets would be bigger, witii more seats to fill. Where would the addi-
tional passengers come from? How would these expensive new planes
be paid for? And what about the piston-powered planes which the new
jets would replace? What would be done with them? The growmg com-
petition from foreign airlines was also eating into the revenues of the
lines flying international routes. Lookmg about for a panacea for all
tiiese problems, tiie ATA discovered MATS. Althougih tiie airlines were
ahready getting a quarter of a billion dollars a year from the government
in the form of individual passenger tickets for military personnel and
special charter service hired by MATS, tiie ATA figured the airlines

MATS / 291

could get another five hundred million dollars a year by grabbing the
military cargoes and personnel flown by MATS,

The ATA thus launched an all-out campaign to take over MATS'
peacetime job — ^the job which msures MATS' readmess for war. The
attack came on several different fronts. Members of the Congress, in
both houses, were persuaded to investigate the operations of MATS and
to introduce legislation which would curtail those operations severely.
Powerful organizations like the United States Chamber of Commerce
and at one time, certain important members of the American Legion,
prior to its National Convention, took anti-MATS positions. The press of
the nation, including some aviation magazines whose editors should have
known better, jumped on the bandwagon. Lengthy and critical articles
on MATS appeared in Time magazine, The New York Times, and the
Wall Street Journal, among others.

God knows why, but before I came along, MATS was taking all this
lying down. After I assumed command, I had a thorough study of our
operations made by John Hohenberg, a Columbia University professor
serving as a special consultant to the Secretary of the Air Force. In it
Hohenberg asserted that the public had been supremely indifferent to
military air transport. "Until the past twelve months," he wrote, "even
MATS itself did nothing to call attention to its plight. In view of this
record it is to be wondered that we have any military airlift capability
at aU.

"The most curious development of all," Hohenberg continued, "is
that the communities nearest the MATS bases, and their elected and
appointed officials, apparently have not the slightest inklmg that the
organization which provided a substantial amount of their business was
in serious difficulty. It is a fact that when there is even a rumor of
reduced activity in most Army posts or Air Force bases, the commander
is besieged by delegations of anxious and often angry officeholders and
townspeople. This did not happen in the case of any town or city near
a MATS base until the annual crisis was almost over, and then the
reaction was confined to factual news coverage and editorial comment
in the local press. A supply operation essentially does not have the
glamor that makes for intense local interest. That, coupled with com-
mendable restraint displayed by both the Air Force and the MATS
command, probably accounted for the subdued show of public interest.

292 / OVER THE HUMP

It is reasonably clear that MATS suffered from a lack of fundamental
understanding of its mission, both without and within the Department
of Defense

"The Military Air Transport Service has been the target of more
abuse, misinformation and outright untruth than any other part of our
armed forces," according to Hohenberg's report. "It has been difficult,
if not impossible, for the truth to catch up with them in many cases,

"While there is no doubt that a part of this bumper yield of ill wfll
is caused by ignorance, a substantial proportion emanates from those
who either should know better or, at the very least, are in a position
to obtain correct information with little trouble."

I'm sure that the general assumption on the part of the public was
that the attacks levied against MATS were the reasonable outgrowth of
sound thinking on the part of the major aurlines. This was not the case
at all. Only three of the well-known airlines worked with us, and they
accounted for more than 70 per cent of all the business given the com-
mercial carriers, with a swarm of small companies fighting for the bal-
ance. Some of these small companies were entirely dependent on MATS
for their existence. A few did not own a single airplane; if and when they
got a contract, they'd lease a plane. The most virulent attacks on MATS
came from these smaller outfits, some of which were skating so close
to the edge of unsafe operation that it was questionable whether they
should have any government business at all, much less more of it. Hohen-
berg's report tells of a company which landed an overseas job and then
could not find a navigator. It flew the plane to the port of embarkation
and there attempted to borrow a navigator from the Air Force. Failing
in that, the company then ran a help-wanted ad in the newspapers.

The charges against MATS were reiterated over and over again,
in newspaper columns, magazine stories, broadcasts, and telecasts, in
speeches before numerous patriotic and trade associations, and before
Congressional committees. The copies of the hearings before Congres-
sional committees on this one subject weigh several pounds. To boil all
this verbiage down to a few paragraphs is doubtlessly most unfair to
those who cooked it up, but here goes:

— ^MATS, with its fleet of some twelve hundred planes, was the
largest ak transport operation in the world.

— ^MATS was in direct competition with many commercial airlines.

MATS / 293

It flew the same routes that commercial airlines flew. Its flints were
operated on a schedule. MATS was, in short, an airline.

— ^Many of MATS planes were plush, prettied-up jobs with many
seats removed so the brass could loU around.

— MATS employed 480 beautiful stewardesses to administer to its
passengers, a plethora of pulchritude.

— ^MATS' attempts to justify itself by claiming to support the vital
Strategic Air Command were not valid, inasmuch as SAC maintained
a fleet of one hundred transports of its own.

From these premises, the ATA went on to make positive proposals
to anyone who would listen, includmg Congress. These proposals, de-
signed to make MATS cargo available to the civilian airlines and the
Civil Reserve Air Fleet on the grounds that government-owned opera-
tions should not take busmess away from private enterprise, were as
follows:

— ^MATS' equipment and personnel should be sharply reduced in
numbers.

— ^MATS should drastically reduce its flying time for both equipment
and personnel. Flight simulators could be used to train flying personnel.
— ^MATS should fly its planes empty.

The average taxpayer, lookmg over these well-marshaled arguments
and the conclusions drawn therefrom, would probably agree that they
made good sense. So, at any rate, did much of the nation's press, several
national organizations, and many members of Congress.

Actually, however, the facts were these:

—MATS, the world's largest airline. More than half of MATS twelve
hundred planes were specialized aircraft assigned to the technical serv-
ices, and had nothing to do with transportation. MATS was indeed a
large ahrline, havmg a lusty, demanding, and often inpatient customer
in the Department of Defense, but it was by no means the world's
largest— that was the Soviet Union's "Aeroflot."

—MATS operated special plush jet planes. MATS did maintain ex-
actty three planes, modifications of the K-135 SAC tanker, for the express
use of the President, Congress, and top-leyel officials and high-ranking
dignitaries of other nations on special missions. Secretary of State John
Foster Dulles and, later, his successor. Christian Herter, practically lived
in one.

294 / OVER THE HUMP

—Flying the same routes as civilian airlines, and on schedule. The
explanation to this should be obvious. Between any two points on a
world surface, say, Washington and Frankfurt, a most important run,
there is bound to be one superior route. Should MATS fly a more
curcuitous route than civilian airlines? It would also seem somewhat
ineflScient not to schedule flights — should the plane be sent off wiUy-
niUy whenever a pilot felt like taking a ride? A schedule is simply an
efficient program.

— 480 beautiful stewardesses. The actual number of WAF personnel
assi^ed to MATS flights during that period was just under 250; there
were many more male attendants. Surely no one would argue that our
military dependent passengers, often totaling over one hundred women
and children on one plane, should be left unattended on long, trans-
oceanic flights. Our female attendants were well suited for duty on these
flights, particularly to care for children and to dispense food. In the
circumstances under which a WAF could serve as flight attendant, she
freed a male airman for other duties. We did acknowledge that our
American service girls were pretty. We were proud of them.

—MATS' riding on SACs coattails. This just wasn't true. MATS
supported SAC on a routine daily basis and was assigned specific and
vital re-supply duties in the event of war.

To accede to any of the recommendations of the airlmes would both
weaken MATS and its potential to carry out its D-Day mission, and
would cost the American taxpayer many millions of dollars.

I could hardly agree to the curtailment of equipment and personnel;
the twin crises of Lebanon and Formosa proved our current strength
inadequate.

Reduction of the utilization rate, which had been set by the JCS at
five hours per day, would seriously endanger the success of the MATS
D-Day mission. The five-hour utilization rate was already on rock bot-
tom; I knew this from bitter experience, and any officer who had served
on my staff in either the Berlin or the Korean Airlift knew it too. In
Korea, we had attempted to surge from a utilization rate of 2.8 to a
utilization rate assigned us by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of ten hours per
day. Though we gave it all we had, we were able to brmg up the utiliza-
tion rate, in the most crucial period of the war, to only four hours per
plane. In order to surge to all-out heights of utilization in the most crucial

MATS / 295

period of the next war the very first few days, it is absolutely essential
to have a high utilization rate from which to begin.

The suggestions that our crews train in simulators, or that they fly
empty planes, seemed at first glance almost too ridiculous to answer.
I don't think there'd be anyone cognizant of flying safety, including the
ATA, who'd accept the responsibility for accident prevention with pilots
flying ten hours a month and in simulators. Besides, a pilot flying an
airplane is only a part of the training involved in an air-transport opera-
tion. MATS must train constantly in many areas — ^maintenance, traffic,
and all the problems pertaining to the handling of both cargo and pas-
sengers. There just isn't any way you can train for an airlift except in
the operation of an airlift. This was what MATS was doing, around the
clock: Training for its D-Day mission of operating an airlift.

Many proposals were made which would increase the use of civilian
aircraft in military operations, including the D-Day mission. MATS was
already using chartered CRAF planes in day-to-day operations, and a
definite plan had been worked out to feed them into wartime operations
at a specified time. However, I did not feel that MATS should count on
using civilian equipment or personnel in peacetime missions to hot spots,
or in full participation in time of war. As the commanding officer of a
military organization with a highly important and strategic war mission, I
considered it imperative to have my personnel subject to the Articles of
War. Civilian pilots and equipment could perform important functions,
but for duty in danger areas, or without warning, military personnel
alone would do.

Although anachronistic, I would like to point out as a pertinent ex-
ample the praiseworthy job MATS personnel performed in the Congo
Airlift. At the outset, MATS operated about 850 missions, carrying in
eighty-five hundred United Nations personnel and thirty-seven hundred
tons of cargo. These forces provided an essential element of stability in
that new, riot-torn republic. But it was a rough airlift job. In Africa,
flight crews slept on the concrete aprons beneath their planes, occasion-
ally hearing snakes hissing around them in the dark. They lived on
C-rations and water. Some contracted malaria. Members of one crew
were beaten up by a group of Congo soldiers; they were saved just in
time by some Ethiopian UN troops. The pilot suffered, according to the
terse language of the medical profession, "multiple lacerations of the

296 / OVER THE HUMP

scalp and face, contusions and abrasions of the back, fracture of 11 ribs
and fracture of the skuU." It later developed that he also had a punc-
tured lung. Despite such dangers, not one man of the Air Force personnel
flying the airhft refused duty. They were aU mflitary men, good soldiers
in the finest tradition of the word. Of course, as is true in any military
organization, any man who failed to carry out his orders would have
been court-martialed.

In contrast to this miUtary dependability, during the Lebanon and
Far East crises there were ten separate occasions in which MATS was
unable to secure enough civiUan planes to help us with our routine
flights; it was summertime, vacation season. Also, in some cases all bids
were so high they had to be rejected. Thus, whfle the ATA was beating
the drums tiying to get MATS business for tiie airlines, some of tiiose air-
lines were tummg it down at the very time we desperately needed them.

It is necessary for MATS to tiram constanfly, twenty-four hours every
day, to maintain instantaneous readiness for its D-Day mission. This
ti-aining requires not merely flying an airplane, but full-scale operation
of every phase of the military airlift. If we had flown our planes empty,
we would not have been traming properly. Thus we did in peacetime
practice basically what we would do in wartime operations: ctoy people
and materiel about tiie world. MATS was ahready passing on to the
airlines a minimum of $70,000,000 a year for augmentation of its own
peacetime operations, and the DOD was buying anotiier $250,000,000
wortii of ak transport m tiie form of individual passenger tickets, biUs
of lading, or special charters of aircraft. Still tiie lobbyists were demand-
ing from Congress a bigger share of MATS business. My cost experts
got out thek pencils and figured that to split the military materiel and
personnel MATS planes carried witii civilian aurlines would add another
$300,000,000 to tiie Defense airlift bill. If we flew empty, as many
aurlines spokesmen advocated, it would cost anotiier $750,000,000—
totalmg a one-billion-dollar annual peacetime aurlift bill to be met by
the American taxpayer.

Anotiier point of attack was tiie MATS poUcy of letting out conducts
to tiie lowest bidder. Through this system we were able to secure bids
for as Htfle as seventy-nine dollars per head from New York to Germany
for Department of Defense personnel and their families. Some of the
aurlines which won tiiese bids later termed them disastrous, but tiie long-

MATS / 297

range effect, as far as the nation and the riding public were concerned,
has proved to be most beneficial. At that time the cheapest seat from
New York to Frankfurt was $328. Our low-bid policy forced commer-
cial carriers to do the job for less, and they proved to themselves that
they could charge a more reasonable rate and still make money. In
1958, military personnel and their dependents were comprisiag fully
half of the passenger travel to Europe and much more than half of the
travel to Alaska and the Far East. As rates were lowered to the general
public, more and more people took advantage of them, with the result
that today the commercial traveler or tourist can get a reasonable rate
in economy class and should soon get an even better one; well-managed
airlines are prospering. Reduction of fares has opened up a whole new
world of travel both to the airlines and the general public.

Apart from the potential danger to both American defense and Amer-
ican economy threatened by the ATA attacks, they had two direct and
deleterious effects on our current operation. One was to make it even
more difficult on our plamiing section in its routine, important mission
of requisitioning today equipment and materiel which we would need
tomorrow. The pressure of the attacks, plus the reluctance of the admm-
istration and DOD to spend money on so out-of-vogue a command as
MATS, seriously curtailed our efforts just to keep what we had. For
several years in the 1950's we did not have a single new airplane in
design or on order. And airplanes are not a commodity which you can
just run over to the shopping center and pick up.

Nor could these attacks fail to depress the morale of our people.
MATS had a good safety record, and with the even greater emphasis
on safety I brought in with me I expected it to be even better; our safety
petfonnance was, in fact, as Qay Blair, Jr., pointed out in an article
in the Saturday Evening Post, "The envy of every airline." But this
constant hammering on MATS naturally had its effect.

"Morale is one of our gravest problems," Red Forman, then a brig-
adier general commanding McGuire Air Force Base, told Blair for the
same Post article. "Frequently I have to gather all the officers and men in
the auditorium and drum into them that what we are doing is important
for national security. We are attacked nearly every week by someone."

When I inherited MATS, I found it operating without the enthusiasm
and the esprit de corps I would have liked. The sudden, important activity

298 / OVB* THE HUMP

brought on by the twin crises overseas changed attitudes dramatically;
there's nothing like hard work and accomplishment to make a good sol-
dier buck up. Further, I had seen on previous occasions how a good, lively
newspaper fosters healthy morale. Such a newspaper would also be a wel-
come adjunct to our arsenal of defoose against the airlines attack. We had
a hundred thousand people, both military and civilian, in our employ, and
that many people, alerted and informed, could make up a force to be reck-
oned with. The paper was begun. Later we added a new feature, called
"Newsd^." I believed that our personnel would be encouraged by the
recognition I hoped would be forthcoming, and arranged to have pertinent
items on MATS in the press reproduced and sent around to all our bases.
As we got our case before more and more newspapers and magazines,
this news service proved to our far-flung personnel that they were not
alone, that the nation was begmning to know and to care.

In my first few weeks on the job I felt I could resolve aU our differ-
ences with the au-lmes through explanation and reason. With the help
of my old friend, Jim Douglas, who had become Secretary of the Air
Force, I invited the presidents of each of our United States airlines out
to Scott Fidd for a thorough briefing on our entire operation. I was naive
enough to think that a presentation of our case would appeal to both
then- common sense and patriotism, and that they would then call off
the war. In the case of such men as C. R. Smith of American and
W. A. Patterson, of United Aklines, I was right, but these two had never
participated in the fight on MATS m the first place. It was the smaUer
lines and the ATA's lobbyists who resisted our e^lanation and our
appeal. Despite the briefings the attacks went on.

By now MATS and I found ourselves in much the same position I had
found the Marines at Hagaru-ri— surrounded. The civilian airlines, the
press, vociferous members of Congress, national organizations, even
bureaus of the Department of Defense and the military establishment,
includmg officers I had known well over the years — all were closing in.
The decision to fight back was not at all a difficult one. I knew that
there was a danger that the impending controversy might be bad for the
Ak Force, bad for the airlines. But the alternative, permitting the emas-
culation of the nation's airlift force, would be infinitely worse. If I had
failed to fight, our strategic aklift would certainly be in pitiful shape by
now. And so we did fight back, in every way we could.

MATS / 299

One way was through public opinion. We took our story to the press.
One of the nation's highly respected military analysts was Brigadier
General Thomas R. Phillips, USA (retired), appearing in the 5^. Louis
Post Dispatch and other papers. We invited him to Scott Field, showed
him our complete operation, and let him draw his own conclusions. The
result was a two-part, highly favorable comment published in several
major newspapers. Holmes Alexander, another widely syndicated col-
umnist, also wrote favorably of our position. The Armed Forces Man-
agement Magazine carried a thorough, well-researched piec^ by Bill
Borklund. The Air Force Magazine permitted me to present our case
in its pages. Many other newspapers and magazmes began presenting the
case for MATS favorably, and others presented both sides of the issue.
Many of those which attacked us, or which attempted to present an un-
biased account, permitted a rebuttal. Thus, in answer to lead editorials in
The New York Times, I wrote letters, which were printed, setting forth in
some detail the facts of the issues involved.

We were able to present our side to several members of Congress.
Among those who made speeches in our favor and had favorable articles
inserted in the Congressional Record, were Senators Howard W. Cannon,
Barry M. Goldwater, and J. Strom Thurmond, and Representatives John
F. Baldwin, Jr., Melvm Price, and L. Mendel Rivers.

Two of the major national organizations which had early lined up on
the side of the civilian airlmes were the American Legion and the United
States Chamber of Conmierce. MATS sprang to its own defense in both
these important forums. Both responses began on a grass-roots level,

A major MATS base is located at Charleston, South Carolina. John
Rivers, owner of a Charleston television station and a prominent mem-
ber of the local Chamber, had learned from his own observation and
from his reporters who had covered operations at the base that MATS
was doing an efficient and important job. He arranged for the Armed
Forces Committee of the Charleston Chamber to come to Scott Field
and receive a special briefing, and make their own complete investiga-
tion of our operation. They must have liked what they saw, for when
they got back home they passed a resolution completely favorable to
MATS, in opposition to the position of the national Chamber.

James F. Seagraves, a reserve officer employed as a civilian at Scott
Field, invited the Chamber of the nearby city of Belleville, Illinois, to pay

300 / OVER THE HUMP

US a similar visit. The Belleville Chamber, too, was impressed by the
MATS organization, and so stated in a resolution. Copies of these resolu-
tions were sent to every other Chamber in the United States. Such a
complete, 180-degree variation in position could not help but cause
comment. The discussion grew within the national body and reached
the point that the issue was brought before the National Defense Com-
mittee of the Chamber in a special meeting.

To present the MATS position, I sent my second in command, Major
General Raymond J. Reeves, a most articulate, personable, intelligent,
and dedicated officer. It was the first time that a member of the Au^
Force had discussed MATS before the Committee, and the members
were keenly interested both in Reeves's speech and in his thoughtful,
straight-from-the-shoulder answers to the questions they shot at him
after his formal talk.

It was Seagraves who carried the ball for us at the convention of the
American Legion, of which he was a promment member. When the
Legionnaires were apprised of the true facts, they approved a resolution
urgmg the Congress to provide sufficient modem aircraft and training
facilities to enable MATS to carry out its missions. Other patriotic organ-
izations, notably the Jewish War Veterans and the AMVETS, passed
sunilar resolutions.

Long before our work with these organizations had come to fruition,
I had taken the offensive both m the military establishment and before
Congress. Whether in football, war, or debating, the best defense is a
good offense. Thus, while we were still receivmg fire from every quarter
for running too big an operation and taking business away from the
private airlines, I began militating for a sizable augmentation of MATS
flying equipment. Actually, no matter what our situation had been vis-k-
vis the ATA, MATS desperately needed strengthening. Our planes
were obsolete and obsolescing. The backbone of the fleet was the C-124,
that wonderfully sturdy ship I had sold Stu Symington during the Berlin
Airlift, Christmas, 1948. Our 124's had given great service, in the Korean
War, hi constant training, in our many emergency and humanitarian air-
lifts. But now, m comparison to the planes which the aircraft industry
is today capable of buildmg, thek range is too short, capacity too small,
and operation cost too high. The time to replace them completely was

MATS / 301

long overdue, and yet there was not only no replacement on order, none
was even in the state of design.

Ever since the days of the Hump, those of us in air transport had been
talking about the perfect transport plane. Many of these features had
been incorporated in the C-124, but now the industry was capable of
giving us much more.

For one thmg, we wanted an abplane that could do the airlift job
faster, with more responsiveness, and in greater quantity — a big plane
which would be able to carry heavier loads, as well as bulky loads. In
both the Hump and the Berlin Airlift we had had to cut up heavy equip-
ment in order to get it on the airplane, and loading could only be done
by hand. We knew the disadvantages of this cumbersome procedure, and
we wanted a plane on which we could load bulky objects without chop-
ping them up first, and by mechanical means.

In my opinion, the military cargo airplane should be loaded straight
in from either the front or the rear mstead of through a side door. The
whole envelope should be available for a maximimi-size object, such as
our biggest missile. Thus the plane should have a swing tail or some other
method of straight-in loading. It should sit low, at truck-bed height, so
that it can be loaded direcdy from standard commercial trucks, thus eluni-
nating the need for high-lift trucks and fork-lifts. In a low-wing mono-
plane, the wing sits on the wheels, and the fuselage in turn sits on the
wing; it*s pretty far off the ground. In the high-wing design, the fuselage is
closer to the ground; this, then, would be preferable.

For some reason, no cargo airplane had ever been built in which
tonnage and range were completely interchangeable. We figured on a
maximum range of seven thousand miles. For shorter ranges, cargo
would be substituted proportionately for gasoline. Thus the plane we
wanted would be able to carry an appreciable load from CaUfomia non-
stop to the Orient and a much heavier load to Hawaii.

For this plane, speed would be of little consideration. By using air
instead of surface transportation, we are able to cut time in transit from
weeks to hours. After such a reduction, the additional saving of an hour
or two through more expensive engines, burning up fuel at a greater rate,
seemed pomtless. Nor did I care about the type of engme to be used.
No piston-type engine would provide sufficient horsepower for the eighty-

302 / OVER THE HUMP

thousand-pound capacity we hoped for, and so it would have to be either
turboprop or turbojet; that decision would be left to the engineers.

Another thing I was looking for was low-cost operation. Government
defense contracts today pay roughly fifteen cents per ton-mile; airlines
with a fun load and modem eqvapmeat should make mon^ at this rate.
Highly efficient operation with full loads both ways might bring this cost
down to eleven cents.

This was our major requirement— a work-horse plane, cheap to oper-
ate, of indifferent speed, relatively large, and easy to load. It would
become the backbone of the fleet

In addition, we needed a smaller number of planes which could carry
outsized cargo, such as missiles, trucks, and tanks. The huge Douglas
C-133 would serve this purpose well.

Third, we needed a fast jet transport which would be immediately
responsive to SAC requirements in capability to keep up with the B-47's
and B-52's. Any one of the three commercial jets— Boeing 707, Douglas
DC-8, Convair 880— would be acceptable. As they were all available,
these planes could also serve as stopgap akcraft until the work-horse
planes would be available— some time in the dim and unresolved future.

Thus, while MATS was being attacked from every quarter for having
too much equipment, flying too many hours, and hauling too much cargo,
I lit the match to an all-out program to increase them all. Our objectives:

1. ^ A modernized MATS fleet composed of a work-horse plane, an
outsized cargo plane, and a fast jet transport

2. Effective, day-by-day training at the minimum rate to provide all-
important experience for our entire system in handling personnel and
cargo flights on routes tying in with wartime requirements. I accepted
the five-hour utilization rate as a compromise between adequate traming
and economical management

3. Use of this productive capability of MATS by all military services
to permit the most efficient and economical operation. (Instead of cur-
tailing our cargo, in other words, economy and efficiency demanded that
the military establishment augment it. By that time the Air Force had
saved the taxpayer biUions of doflars througji increased use of air trans-
port, but the Army and Navy were stifl utilizing traditional methods of
shipment to a large degree.)

4. Augmentation of the Civil Reserve Au: Fleet consistent with the

MATS / 303

needs of the military establishment to insure prompt delivery in peace*-
time, and to have a powerful reserve force that could be called upon,
after the first surge to wartime strength on the part of the military fleet,
to help meet any emergency. (This was no bone thrown to the airline
industry, but a full appreciation of the vital contribution made by the
airlines in both peace and war.)

When I put forward these proposals, the fur really began to fly. Appar-
ently the civilian airlines that were hostile and the Big Bang advocates in
the military establishment and the Admmistration had actually expected
those of us who had devoted our careers to air transport to sit back help-
lessly and watch the emasculation of MATS, Now our opponents finally
found they had a fight on their hands.

To repeat, this fight was not of my own choosing. I did everything
I could to bring about a conclusion which would be satisfactory to both
sides. I was not interested in a personal victory, only in a dependable
airlift capability. My transport-trained friend Jim Douglas, who had
moved up from Secretary of the Air Force to become Assistant Secretary
of Defense, suggested one possible solution. He reconunended that a spe-
cial group of prominent citizens be named to examine the issue. My staff
and I worked up a proposal to this effect, and I presented it personally to
the new Secretary of the Aur Force Dudley C. Sharp. He, too, liked the
idea> and I augmented the proposal in an informal memo. In it I pointed
out that there were many solid, influential men in civilian life who had an
understanding and a knowledge of mflitary aviation. I proposed a list of
prominent Americans, Secretary Sharp added a few names, and the ATA
was asked to submit candidates. From these names a committee was
formed.

The chairman was Gordon W. Reed, chairman of the board of Texas
Gulf Producing Company. Reed had served on the War Production
Board in World War II and had also spent considerable time as an
advisor on procurement to the Air Materiel Command. Other members
of the committee were James W. Austin, president of Northeast Airlines;
Dr. George P. Baker, professor of transportation, Harvard School of
Business Administration, and president of Transportation Association of
America; General Charles Bolte, USA (Retired); Frederick M. Glass,
vice president and vice chairman of the board, Empke State Building
Corporation; William B. Harding, of Smith Barney and Company; and

304 / OVER THE HUMP

Jacob C. Saliba, executive vice president of Fatrington Manufacturing
Company. This committee spent months on a thorough and comprehen-
sive study of the issue. Scores of witnesses appeared before the commit-
tee, and, judging firom my own experience, its members listened carefully
and attentively. They obviously spent a great deal of time and study on
the entire issue, because their report was full and thorough. I agreed
with some, but by no means aU, of the committee's findings. Essentially,
it recommended both that MATS be modernized and that more business
be given to the civil airlines. I telephoned Gordon Reed and told him
I was not happy with some of his conclusions. He asked which ones,
and I enumerated those recommendations which would give more of
MATS tonnage to the airlines. When I finished, Reed laughed heartily.

"Just before you called," he said, "I got a call from the airlines repre-
sentatives. They are most unhappy too, over our recommendations per-
taining to the modernization of MATS. We must have done a pretty good
job, inasmuch as both of you are mad at me."

In retrospect, I do perceive that the committee's report was helpful
to the Air Force and the Administration. Many of its findings coincided
completely with the MATS position, and thus gave a respected and
influential backing to the cause of military air transport.

But the major battle was fought in Congress. It seemed that I was
constantly supervismg the preparation of lengthy and detailed presenta-
tions, constantly flying to Washington, constantly sittmg in the witness
chair testifying before committees of both the Senate and the House.
Some of our presentations were so complete that many days were devoted
to them; often separate phases of our report would be divided up among
half a dozen top officers especially chosen both for their expertise and
lucidity in the witness chair. Sometimes there were fiery exchanges, but
the fireworks in the hearing rooms were nothing compared to what was
going on behind the scenes. For just as eagerly as we were attempting
to present our case, so our opponents, both from the Air Transport
Association and, I am sorry to say, from some elements within the serv-
ices, were attempting to present theirs. On one occasion, an important
paper was conveniently lost— we at MATS felt— m the Department of
Defense. My deputy, Bunky Reeves, practically made the accusation. A
functionary who was responsible for the paper bridled and demanded if
Reeves was calling him a liar. This all happened in private conversation.

MATS / 305

"If the shoe fits, wear it,** Bunky snapped. Thou^ new to it, he had
become a real transport man.

Despite such wrangles, the events of that hectic period brought out
much of what is good and right in our American system. A good deal
of our opportunity to present our side of the controversy before Con-
gress resulted not from our direct efforts to get our case across as much
as indirectly from the pressure of the opposition. For our senators and
congressmen did not accept without question all they were told by the
opposition's lobbyists. Rather, they gave a thorough hearing to both
sides, even though it meant an exhaustive amount of time and study.
Thus it was that the esteemed chairman of the House Committee on
Armed Services, Representative Carl Vinson of Georgia, deemed it
advisable to make a complete study of the entire airlift situation. In
keepmg with the decision of the full committee, Chairman Vinson ap-
pointed a special subcommittee under the chakmanship of Representa-
tive L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina to undertake the study. Hearings
began March 8, 1960, and continued regularly until April 22. Witnesses
began with Deputy Secretary of Defense James Douglas, Secretary of
the Army Wilbur Brucker, and Secretary of the Air Force Dudley
Sharp, and continued until over sixty witnesses had been heard and
numerous lengthy reports presented.

Just as the committee set out with the firm and patriotic resolve to
determine fairness and the facts, so did our Air Force co-operate fully
with the same spirit. There was no question but that much of the opposi-
tion to MATS within the Air Force came from dedicated men who were
steadfastly and resolutely convinced that the very existence of the nation
depended completely upon a strong nuclear deterrent force, and that any
additional allocation of already scarce funds to air transport would
weaken our military posture in this time of great international tension.
Knowing this full well, and not wishing to step out of Ime with the official
wshes of the Air Force, I went to the Chief of Staff, General White, to
ask for guidance.

"As you know. General," I said, "I am a strong believer in the fact
that we need an air transport force, and that we need more money for
the modernization of that force. We need to hold on to what we have,
and to go forward with modernization. But I want to make sure that my

306 / OVER THE HUMP

testimony to this effect before the Congressional committee will not run
counter to the wishes of the Air Force."

General White looked at me levelly for a moment, and then he said,
"Bill, some people here on the staff don't approve of your position, it's
true. But the fact remains that you are the boss of MATS, you have been
with it for many years, you see it more closely than anyone else, and
I think you will come up with the right answers. When you go before
Congress, you say what you think, and you'll be all right."

We presented a full-scale briefing of several days' duration. The report
of the committee was not forthcoming for several weeks, for in the middle
of the hearings there was a full-scale diversion. When I had first taken
command of MATS, I had noted that, though our personnel seemed to
be doing their jobs diligently, there seemed to be a lack of esprit de corps,
the aU-out enthusiasm I liked to have in my command. Morale improved
as we went along, but we needed some dramatic operation to buck up
our personnel, get them on their toes — something like the Air Forces
Day on the Hump, Easter Parade in Berlin. It also seemed obvious that
we needed some practical application of our mission. Flying our planes
five hours a day on routine flights was not a real application of what we
would actually be called upon to do in event of war. A full-scale maneu-
ver, a military exercise, was clearly called for. One of our primary mis-
sions would be to move troops, complete with equipment, to a trouble
spot overseas. Thus I envisioned for our maneuver the airlifting of a
large body of troops to Panama or the Philippines, say, or to Europe.
Such a maneuver would not only give both MATS and the new Strategic
Army Corps vital training for their wartime mission, but would accel-
erate the interest and enthusiasm of our own people in this practical
application of our reason for being. Further, if done on the scale I envi-
sioned — and I wanted to do it big or not at all — ^the maneuver could not
fail to attract the attention of the press and the public to MATS in
specific and to the potentialities and shortcomings of air transport in
general.

My budget oflBcers estimated that the maneuver could be executed
for about $10,600,000. Though miniscule in comparison to the eighteen-
billion-dollar budget of the Air Force, for a combmation of two such
out-of-style concepts as au: transport and preparation for limited wars as
opposed to the Big Bang, this was a large amount indeed. When I first

MATS / 307

proposed it, Curt LeMay, then vice chief of staff, advised me bluntly
to forget it — ^there were no Air Funds avaUable that could be diverted to
a transport maneuver.

Perhaps a more tractable commander would have accepted this sage
advice. I did not If the Air Force would not give me the money for the
maneuver out of the general military fund, why, then it would be neces-
sary to go to Congress to get an amount especially earmarked for such
a maneuver. The fact that Congress, at the time, due to the constant
hmnmering of the airline interests, considered MATS a giant boondoggle
only made the impossible proposition a litde more difficult Just getting
before the pertinent subcommittees would be a major operation. How-
ever, I was helped in my project by the airline lobbyists themselves. So
much pressure was put on Congress to shrink MATS down to nothmg
that these gentlemen, in fauness and wisdom, called upon us to defend
ourselves. In so defending, I also asked for money for the maneuver.
Apparently the sheer effrontery of the request must have mtrigued the
lawmakers, for this time $10,600,000 was actually earmarked for the
exercise. The place, Puerto Rico, was designated by higher authority. I
would have preferred Europe, or Panama, for the greater distance would
have provided a real test, but any place was O.K. with me. I was so
grateful for the opportunity to display our wares that I would have settled
for the Gobi Desert.

And now that I had the money to transport troops to Puerto Rico,
I needed troops. Fortunately, General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, the Army
Chief of Staff, was an air-minded Army General, who had become con-
vinced that air transport was vital to the United States Army. From then
on, the Army worked closely and faithfully with us. General Bruce C.
Qarke, who had served as commander-in-chief of the Army in Europe
when I was commander of the Air Forces, was then commander of the
Continental Army Command. Our first meetmg was at Clarke's head-
quarters at Fort Monroe, Virginia. After we had discussed plans in gen-
eral, he mentioned somewhat proudly that he felt he could give five
thousand Army troops for the maneuver.

I sat up straight in my chair. "I was counting on at least tWrty thou-
sand," I said.

"Where would we get them from?" he asked. "Maybe we could get
eigibt thousand, but that's tops."

308 / OVER THE HUMP

I went back home and thought this matter over. My staff and I dis-
cussed it at length. With a maximum of eight thousand troops, we fig-
ured, the maneuver was not worth the effort. We needed to move at
least one division to make it all worth while. If we could not run a big
operation, with our planes flying at a greatly increased rate, simulat-
ing war, and thus hauling thousands on thousands of troops as well as
guns and trucks and ammunition and food, there would simply be
no point in having it. I called Bruce and told him that I would appre-
ciate the opportunity to come down and discuss this question some more.
He said that it would be impossible for him to be there on the day I
proposed, but that he would gather his staff and field commanders to-
gether to meet with me. When I arrived, I found Qarke's chief of staff,
a lieutenant general, acting as chairman of the meeting, with high-rank-
ing officers from Fort Benning, Georgia, Fort Bragg, North Carolina,
and Camp Campbell, Kentucky. They agreed that by scraping the barrel
they could furnish a total of fifteen thousand troops. All other personnel
were in special schools, or were new recruits, or just weren't in the Army.

"I've been thinking this matter over," I said, "and I can see that per-
haps my original estimate of thirty thousand men was high. However,
I do feel that we need over twenty thousand troops to make this opera-
tion meaningful and worth while. Now you have fifteen thousand men.
I wonder if you would mind if I were to go to the United States Marmes
and ask them if they could provide five thousand people for this maneu-
ver. That would give us twenty thousand."

For a full minute there was not one soimd in that room. I don't
believe anyone breathed, much less spoke. Fmally, the Chief of Staff
cleared his throat. "I tiiink," he said, "tiiat the Army will find you twenty
thousand men."

As it turned out, the number was twenty-one thousand. Troops were
brought in from as far away as the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii, and
the force was augmented with the Army Reserve and the National Guard,
but we wound up with a meanmgful quantity of men to work with.

From the very beginning, the joint exercise proved to be most fruit-
ful in both training and application. It was known as "Operation Big
Slam/Puerto Pine." "Big Slam" was the name given the MATS portion
of the joint exercise; the mission, stated succinctiy, was to evaluate
MATS ability to surge to a high utilization rate and transport an Army

MATS / 309

force to Puerto Rico and return. **Puerto Pine'' was the name given the
Army part of the maneuver. The true significance of the Big Slam
operation lay in the fact that during a period of fifteen days we would
be performing two jobs. First, we would continue our routine, round-
the-world flights with no disruption whatever to schedules or tonnage.
Second, on top of this, we set out to transport an Army force consisting
of 21,030 troops and 11,096 tons of cargo, a mission originally evaluated
as requiring approximately 1,269 outbound trips from the various onload
bases withm the United States to the staging area in Puerto Rico, and
the return. This would require a surge from the peacetune utilization
rate of five hours per plane per day to a rate of eight hours per plane
per day for a period of fifteen days.

Many long hours of planning went into the joint operation long before
the first teaspoon of gas was burned. The Army, for example, had to
plan the movement of the STRAC units from twenty-seven United States
Army posts and stations to the fourteen onload bases. Similarly, my staff
at MATS was charged with consolidating the 447 aircraft we would use
—291 C-124's, 107 C-118's, 56 C-12rs, and 29 C-133's— at these
bases. (Our entire fleet had to be scheduled so that a specific number
were on stand-by for SAC and others were performing our routine flights
over the world.)

The actual maneuver began March 14, 1960, and contmued for fifteen
of the most exciting days I have ever spent in a training exercise. From
the moment the first soldier stepped on board the first transport to leave
the Continental United States until the last man marched off at the con-
clusion of the exercise, MATS personnel put on a display of eflSiciency,
excellence, and devotion to duty that would make any commander's
heart thrill with pride. Nor were my men operating in a vacuum. The
drama and enormity of the maneuver attracted VIP's from both the
military and the Administration, as well as observers from other nations.
Many senators and congressmen came to Puerto Rico to see the airlift
function at first hand. It took the fancy of the press of the nation and
the world to the extent that there were no less than 352 representatives
of the press covering it in Puerto Rico alone. "You got more corre-
spondents here than were at the invasion of Normandy,** one of them
told me wryly.

When it came to putting on a show, we didn't let them down. Depend-

310 / OVER THE HUMP

ing upon the viewpoint, even the weather could be said to have co-oper-
ated. During several days, the en-route weather was absolutely atrocious.
A strong frontal system developed at sea parallel to the coastlme from
the Caribbean right on up the eastern seaboard. The turbulence was
particularly violent at mid-altitude, between fifteen thousand and thirty
thousand feet. I was in a C-118 flying at eighteen thousand feet when
we suddenly hit this turbulence. Never in my flymg career, not even on
the Hump, had I ever experienced such violent gyrations of the airplane.
The pilot had to fight the controls with all his strength. For the soldiers
in the C-124's it was both frightening and embarrassing, for even veteran
airmen became airsick. They were mighty happy to land. So were the
pilots. I checked with several coming in, and many showed me hands
covered with blisters. Yet these men turned right around and flew back
through the turbulence again. This was their job, it was what they were
tramed to do and paid to do, and they did it well. Their bleeding hands
comprised the highest tribute to air transport in general and to the Mili-
tary Air Transport Service in particular; they proved their own esprit de
corps and dedication to their service.

Much as I would like to dwell on the drama and heroism of Operation
Big Slam/Puerto Pine, this is one case m which statistics best tell the
story. In the entire operation a total of 1,250 round trips were flown,
over distances of up to 4,130 miles (McChord AFB in Washington
State). Flying hours totaled 50,496. A total of 21,095 troops were air-
lifted to the staging area in Puerto Rico and returned, and a total of
10,949 tons were transported out and returned. And all this time our
other missions continued.

Many lessons were learned from the exercise, lessons which might
conceivably mean the difference between victory and defeat in the
event of war. First, the exercise validated previous experience in MATS
in regard to the essentiality of the requirement for a minimum-readiness
training rate of five hours for the bulk of the MATS strategic airlift
force. During this entire period, our personnel worked to the limit of
their endurance — ^twelve hours a day, eighty-four hours a week, or
more — to accomplish an increase of only three hours in the utilization
rate. This was a clear answer to those critics who, with little or no
knowledge of the complexities of aurlift, had held a position that MATS

MATS / 311

could train adequately with a utilization rate of only one or two hours
per day. You just can't turn on a substantial increase overnight.

The practicality of augmentmg MATS' routine airlift by commercial
aircraft was proved, for this we had done; CRAF planes had flown
some of our routine military schedules across the ocean in order to
release MATS planes to Big Slam. However, the exercise also showed
that the use of commercial aircraft and crews in a specific military
exercise, or in emergency operation to potential hostile areas, would
not be feasible. We could not have increased the working time of our
civilian crews to the same extent we increased the working time of our
military crews. Further, the flexibility of the military crews was demon-
strated when Navy-operated C-12rs were forced to overfly their own
base and land instead at an Air Force base. The Navy crews had flown
the maximum time allowable for safe operation. However, Air Force
crews took over, and the aircraft continued on without delay. If these
had been civilian planes, they could not have had such flexibility.
Maintenance would also have been a problem.

The MATS flying-safety program was completely validated during
the course of this exercise. Even extremely adverse weather did not
seriously interrupt the performance of the mission. There was not one
flying accident, not one fatality, and only one injury classified as serious:
a STRAC soldier was shaken up in the turbulence. As far as the
quality and effectiveness of the MATS flying safety program was con-
cerned, the record spoke for itself.

All these, as well as a dozen or more technical points which I have
omitted but which have been lengthily discussed in technical journals,
proved the capability of MATS personnel to do the job.

But this was only one face of the coin. What about the capability
of the equipment? My Army friends Lemnitzer and Qarke and I had
taken a calculated risk. We were convinced that, while our personnel
would prove themselves, our equipment would not. It would be insuf-
ficient in number, obsolete in quality. And we banked on the perspicacity
of military observers and military experts of the press to perceive this
imbalance.

And they did. Our hopes were fulfilled. As Ray Towne put it, "This
operation was the most spectacularly successful failure in the history
of military training."

312 / OVER THE HUMP

Almost from the beginning it was obvious lliat our men and planes
were doing a good job. Our aircraft were coming into the staging area
at intervals of slightly under four minutes. Troops poured out, cargo
was unloaded, and the planes gassed up and went back for more.
Observers could see that it was a smooth and efficient operation.

In spite of the efficient operation, the deficiencies became more and
more apparent. As Richard Fryklund, of the Washington Star, wrote
in the first week of the exercise:

The biggest Army-Ak Force Strategic Airlift in history, going
on now between the United States and Puerto Rico, seems to be a
demonstration of inadequacy ... the Air Force planes bemg used
are too few and too old. And much Army equipment is too big
to be carried by air. Despite the fact that this exercise is a record
breaker ... the force trickling into Puerto Rico is a rather weak
one ...

If the men were being sent to fight a small and poorly equipped
enemy not too far from home base and if time were not too im-
portant, the airlift would be a success. But if the Army had to fight
a substantial force a long distance away in a hurry, it would be in
trouble.

This is not to criticize the men engaged in Big Slam/Puerto
Pine, the aurlift exercise. You cannot stand by the runways of
Ramey Air Force Base and Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station
in Puerto Rico and watch the planes roll in like clockwork and
the troops unload and move smoothly to dispersal areas without
gaining respect for the soldiers and aumen.

In spite of our all-out efforts, it soon became clear that the airlift
carried in less than a third of the equipment that would be needed to
make the troops combat effective. Out of the ten thousand-odd tons
of cargo we brought in, there was only one light tank, few vehicles —
some with empty gas tanks to lighten the load — and little artillery.
Many troops were landed without a single round of ammunition.

The significance of Puerto Rico's proxunity to the Continental
United States became more and more pronounced. If we were having
this much trouble getting equipment to this island less than a thousand
miles from the mainland, what would we do in the case of a conflagra-
tion in Europe, the Middle East, or Asia? Our planes — slow, old, and

MATS / 313

of short range — ^would not be able to reach such trouble spots except
by island-hopping. In the all-too-possible event of all-out war m Asia,
these convenient stepping stones might not exist after the outbreak of
hostilities. Even then, as military observers were quick to point out,
MATS' prunary D-Day mission is the re-supply of the Strategic Ah:
Command and the Tactical Air Command, and it is only after its
responsibilities to these commands are met that it can undertake troop
movements. It was estimated that the initial airlift in the event of war
could put down only one or two companies, a force too small to hold
a bridgehead. It would take at least a month to move in a full division
with re-supply.

Senator Dennis Chavez, chairman of the Defense Department Sub-
conmiittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the first mem-
ber of Congress on the scene, told the press that he was deeply
impressed with both the efficiency and importance of the operation.

"However," he went on, "I am concerned about the outdated air-
craft we are now forced to use. Some were placed in service in 1948,
twelve years ago. They have akeady outlived their planned useful life.
I realize that a deficiency in MATS aurlift force does exist. I do not
believe that we have sufficient modem military aurlift aircraft for the
needs of the world in which we live today. It is a fact that both Congress
and the Administrative branch must take prompt action in this area
of national defense.'*

Big Slam/Puerto Pine received extensive coverage from the small army
of correspondents on hand. Papers m 1,081 cities, according to Ray
Towne's calculations, carried a total of thirty-three thousand columnar
inches of copy and photography on it — an amount equal to eleven daily
issues of The New York Times. Speaking of the Times, its distinguished
military analyst, Hanson W. Baldwin, wrote a lengthy three-part back-
ground story on military airlift in addition to his on-the-spot coverage.

The unannounced and unofficial mission of Big Slam — ^to prove we
needed more and better planes — ^also received full treatment in the
press. Just before the maneuver it had been most fashionable for news-
papers and magazines, if they bothered to mention MATS at all, to
attack it as a bureaucratic waste. Now, with 352 correspondents pour-
ing out the facts from the scene, the emphasis changed abruptly. The
news colunms pomting out the need for increased airlift were followed

314 / OVER THE HUMP

by editorials strongly advocating it. Time magazine, for example, which
not long before had joined in the sniping, now printed a highly favor-
able report of the maneuvers. Its full-length article pointed out that the
Rivers subcommittee had passed a motion to press for funds for the
modernization of MATS, and concluded with the strong editorial com-
ment: "It seemed none too soon." The generally favorable Saturday
Evening Post article by Clay Blair, Jr., mentioned earlier, also received
its original stimulus from Big Slam/Puerto Pine.

Less than a month after the maneuver had ended, but after we had
made a thorough evaluation of the exercise, I was once again summoned
to Washington by Congressman Rivers. He had, of course, been a
diligent and perceptive observer, and I am sure the maneuver made a
great impression on him and his fellow committee members. Bruce
Clarke joined with me m presenting a formal report to them. In it we
said, in part:

"Limitations of the majority of the present MATS aircraft seriously
limit the size of the United States Forces which can be deployed to
distant overseas destinations in acceptable periods of time."

When Rivers asked me specifically why, I told him bluntly: "Because
it took so many airplanes and so much effort to do so small a job."

I would like to be able to give the report of the Rivers subconmiittee
in toto, but unfortunately, its very thoroughness makes this impracti-
cable. Here, paraphrased, is a summary of the subconunittee's recom-
mendations pertaining to airlift.

First, it concluded that our strategic airlift capabilities were seriously
inadequate. To overcome this deficiency, the committee recommended
that a work-horse aircraft of the type I recommended be developed,
and that such aircraft should, to the maximum extent possible, be
compatible with the economic transportation of civilian cargo by civil
airlines. An appropriation of fifty million dollars was recommended
for this purpose. In the meantime, the committee recommended the
augmentation of the fleet with one hundred off-the-shelf aircraft, fifty
K-135 type, fifty C-130 B type.

The committee called attention to the various "private airlift" opera-
tions within the DOD and recommended that they be brought under
centralized control.

It reconmiended that the utilization rate be established at not lese

MATS / 315

than one-half the surge rate required for war. MATS should, "m the
performance of its peacetime utilization rate, continue to transport
military traffic, first, in justification of meaningful training, and secondly,
as a matter of economy/'

The Civil Reserve Air Fleet should be augmented with modem
long-range aircraft to supplement but not replace MATS.

There could be no question but that the excellence of this thorough
report of the Rivers committee — ^which by no means slighted the
participation of the civil airlmes in the over-all program — ^was greatly
instrumental in enabling the Military Air Transport Service to at least
hold its own against its opponents and detractors. The earnest, soft-
spoken South Carolinian pushed hard for a special appropriation to
start on the MATS modernization program. In the upper chamber,
Senator S. Mike Monroney, like Rivers a thorough student of aviation,
but who had earlier opposed us, now also pledged his support.

And suddenly the hue and cry of the civil airlines was no longer
heard in the land. One reporter, Richard L. Mourey, made an analysis
of the situation from both the facts at hand and from the sudden
quietude from the ATA front, and expressed it this way in the story
printed in the Hartford Courant April 17, 1960:

Now that the issue has been cleared of airline meddling in a
problem concerned purely with national security, the moderniza-
tion program should move forward at full speed.

Important as was this victory with the resulting start, however
modest, on a modernization program for MATS, straws in the wind
during that period indicated a turning point in our military planning,
our entire strategic concept. For years the Big Bang boys had been '
firmly in the saddle. Let me reiterate that I was then, and continue to
be, a strong supporter of our nuclear forces. However, I felt that even
as we poured a preponderant amount of our annual budget mto prep-
aration for general war, the big one, we were losing brush-fire wars
all over the globe. In the modem world, only the swift transport of
finely trained troops and tactical air forces could put down these
brush-fire wars with success for the free world. Prior to Big Slam/
Puerto Pine, the two forces which alone could guarantee this swift-
strike potential, the Army and MATS, had not worked together for

316 / OVER THE HUMP

their common good, and for the common good of the nation. Now,
in the spring of 1960, we were finally together, as we should have been
all along.

Further, the top brass in the Air Force, though adherents of the Big
Bang theory, began to realize that air transport did have some impor-
tance in the military establishment. General LeMay, who had helped
to make the Strategic Air Command the greatest military force the
world has ever known, was sufi&ciently interested in air transport to
fly to Puerto Rico to observe the exercise at first hand. General Nathan
F. Twining, chairman of the Jomt Chiefs of Staff and another well-
known booster of strong nuclear forces, had forthrightly volunteered
the information before the Senate Preparedness Committee that a
shortage of surlift for Umited war did exist, and advocated the modern-
ization of MATS. According to an editorial in the Washington Post,
**The Army Chief of Staff, General Lemnitzer, has made a compelling
case before the House Armed Services subcommittee for an adequate
troop airlift."

General Maxwell D. Taylor's book. The Uncertain Trumpet, with
its strong advocacy of the build-up of limited-war forces, was being
read and discussed. His erudite presentation and the points made so
dramatically by Big Slam/Puerto Pine combined at this specific time
to complement one another.

Although there was nothing I wanted more than to see the issue
througlh, the time had now come fqr me to emulate General's Mac-
Arthur's famous old soldier and not die, but "just fade away." I had
had a heart attack in the fall of 1957, while serving as Chief of Opera-
tions of the Air Force in the Pentagon. I had been given the op-
portunity to retire from the service then, but I couldn't bring myself
to do it. I had hopes then of bemg the next commander of MATS,
and I wanted to serve in that capacity no matter what my heart condi-
tion happened to be. It was the job for which my entire military
career had prepared me. And with the aid of my staff and the many
dedicated transport men in that command we did chalk up another
successful mission.

In the winter of 1959-60 I again experienced some days of bad
health, and this time the Air Force doctors strongly advised retire-
ment. But again I couldn't quit, not with the Congressional hearmgs

MATS / 317

and Big Slam coming up. I stayed on duty until the final evaluation
of the maneuvers was completed and I had reported on the results
of Big Slam to Congressman Rivers and his committee. I thought I
had kept my retirement plans pretty well to myself. I was somewhat
surprised, therefore, when at the conclusion of my testimony before
the committee on April 21, Chairman Rivers laid down his gavel,
looked me in the eye, and said:

"General Tunner, you have completed your testimony before this
special subcommittee, and apparently will not appear before us again,
so I have a few remarks I would like to make while you are still with us.

"If there is anyone in America today who has justly earned the
title of 'Mr. Airlift,' I am sure it is you. When we realize that the air-
lift over the *Hump' in World War II, the Berlin Airlift, and the
Korean Airlift were all under your conunand, and owe the greater
part of their success to your leadership and endeavors, it would be
strange indeed if any other name should even be suggested as your
equal in this important field of military endeavor.

"By the very nature of things, it has not been easy in recent years
to carry the banner of MATS. Crosscurrents both within and without
the military services have made your voyage rather stormy. And I know
it has been a matter of concern and keen disappointment to you to
see the MATS fleet age into obsolescence. But you have fought a good
fight and, at long last, it looks as if the help which has been so elusive
in the past is about to arrive in the form of interim modernization for
MATS as well as a firm program for the future.

"I am not one who counts dividends before they are declared. But
I sincerely believe that the Congress is going to provide the relief which
is required, and I sincerely hope that the Executive Branch will join
us in our attempt to solve the airlift problems. That is the result which
both you and we eamesfly seek.

"So, General Tunner, we commend you for a job well done and
wish you well in your future endeavors."

I left the committee room with these words ringing in my ears.
Shortly after, I retked. Counting the four years at West Point, thirty-
six of my fifty-three years had been spent in the military service.

CHAPTER IX

Observations and Recommendations

Like millions of other civilians throughout the United States
that March afternoon in 1961, I settled down comfortably before the
television set for President Kennedy's press conference. Though I
couldn't help but miss^ the excitement and opportunity for service and
accomplishment that Td known in the military service, all was reason-
ably well with my own little world. Both my sons were doing well;
Bill, Jr., had graduated from Washington and Lee University and the
University of Virginia Medical School, and was now serving his intern*
ship. Joe was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, doing
well in his studies and planning to enter law school after graduation.
After several years of widowerhood, I had married a charming young
lady, Ann Hamilton of Enid, Oklahoma, who by coincidence had
served under my command as a pilot in the WASP during World War
II. Now, as our pert little daughter, Suzanne, did her homework, Ann
came m to join me in front of the television set. Together we awaited
the entry of the President into our living room.

I couldn't help then but feel a bit of personal pride in our new
President. During all my years in the service I had deliberately stayed
away from any involvement in civilian politics. I had been a profes-
sional soldier in the employ of a great democracy; I strongly believed
in the American principle that the military is and should be the servant
of the electorate. Thus I had never voted. As a brand-new civilian,
therefore, I found in the presidential campaign of 1960 more tl^
the normal interest any citizen should take in his country's most im-
portant election. I also foimd in it something of the excitement of
discovery. It was fascinating, and I followed it closely.

One of the major issues of the campaign was military preparedness,

318

Observations and Recommendations / 319

and I naturally used it as one of the yardsticks to measure the two
candidates. They came out most unequal. The Republican candidate,
Richard M. Nixon, was running on the record of the Eisenhower Ad-
ministration. Knowing something about the military record of the
Eisenhower Administration, both in my own specialty, air transport,
and in the broader aspects of operations and concepts of the Depart-
ment of Defense as a whole, I felt that Nixon was carrying a pretty
heavy handicap in this race. The Democratic candidate, Senator John
F. Kennedy, on the other hand, had no such restraint. In his speeches
and writings he constantly criticized both the Administration's national
defense policies and the execution of those policies, and made intelligent
proposals for improvement.

Several times durmg the campaign Senator Kennedy referred specifi-
cally to the inadequacies of our military airlift. I was impressed by his
knowledge of this complicated subject. He had not been on any of the
committees before which I had testified, yet it was obvious from his
thorough and confident familiarity with the issues that he had followed
the matter closely. I could not help but be impressed, I never did hear
Nixon mention airlift or tactical air power or comment on warfare
preparations. Kennedy, on the other hand, insofar as these vital matters
were concerned, diagnosed the situation correctly, prescribed the proper
cure, and promised to administer it.

Thus, when at the age of fifty-four I went to the polls for the first
time in my life, I picked a winner my first time out. In this area of
military thinking he did not disappoint me. In his first message to
Congress, President Kennedy announced that he had directed Secretary
of Defense Robert S. McNamara to take prompt action to increase
aurlift capacity. Still, as I settled down in front of the TV set, it had not
been made clear exactly how this increase was to be accomplished.
That is why I suddenly found myself sitting bolt upright in my chair.
It seemed as though the President was talking dnrecfly to me. For out
of the blue came his announcement of a billion-doUar program to build
the plane I had fought for and to modernize our airlift fleet at an
additional expenditure of millions of dollars.

There, within a few seconds, the sweat and anguish of years were
suddenly wiped away, and it all became worth while. It was far more

320 / OVER THE HUMP

than a personal vindication; this was a vital strengthening of America
in the very area where it was most needed.

The official designation of the new work-horse plane is the C-141.
America will eventually have over a hundred of these planes. Lockheed
Aircraft Corporation, which also builds the dependable C-130 Hercules,
is building the C-141 at its plant in Marietta, Georgia. Secretary Mc-
Namara described it as 'The airlift aircraft we've been waiting for, and
we intend to standardize on it for the heavy lift requirement." Although
compromised in some particulars, for commercial use, it had most all
the features I wanted. A giant of a plane weighing 316,000 pounds, it
will carry an 80,000-pound payload across the Atlantic nonstop, carry
two thirds of that across the Pacific nonstop. Its four turbofan engines
will pull it along at a maximum speed of 550 miles per hour. It is a
high-wing plane with a rear-loading ramp at truck-bed height. The con-
tract called for the delivery of the first planes m mid-1964.

The C-141 is more than just a plane. It signifies the return of our
entire military program from almost sole emphasis on all-out nuclear war
to the more practical preparation, in addition, for the localized con-
flicts the free world constantly faces all over the globe. Sooner or later,
our government leaders would have realized the necessity for this
changeover, but I'm sure it was hastened by our activity in MATS and
the Big Slam/Puerto Pines maneuver.

This enormous figure allocated to tiie development and manufacture
of just one type of akcraft should underscore dramatically a point I
have been attempting to make all through this book: the growing
necessity to consolidate all military cargo planes under one command.

When I first became involved witii military air tiransport, tiie best
plane that could be bought, the wonderful Douglas C-47, cost tiiirty-
eight thousand doflars. Today, our new C-141's cost ten milUon doDars
each. This explosive increase in tiie cost of our work-horse aircraft
should certainly point out flie long-overdue necessity for consolidation.
The miUtary has long purchased, witii approval of Congress, transport
airplanes for those services and commands which could defend tiieir
needs. In years gone by, this was a reasonable policy insofar as it
pertamed to airplanes, and still is for many items; but today, witii
tills great increase in tiie price of tiransport planes, tiiis policy should
be re-examined in regard to airplanes. Airlift, ratiier tiian airlift air-

Observations and Recommendations / 321

planes, must be allocated to those commands which need it To scatter
thousands of expensive aircraft, complete with crews, mamtenance, and
spare parts throughout the entire military establishment has always
been an inefficient and expensive waste of men, equipment, and money;
today it is impossible. Over and over again, for twenty years now, I have
seen our great American air transport capabflity hamstrung by ineffi-
cient utilization of aircraft. I first saw it in Chma, where General
Chennault clung to his cargo planes with all the tenacity with which
that great fighting general was capable. Those planes, inadequately
manned and supplied, frequently sat idle while in the India-China
Division we were driving equipment to the breaking point. We had
the same problem of getting enough planes during the Berlin Airlift,
for Operation Swarmer, and for the Korean Airlift. During my first
months as commander of MATS, it was necessary for me to dispatch
48 C-124's to my former command, United States Air Forces in
Europe, to help out in the Lebanon crisis. When that situation cooled
down somewhat, and the Formosa operation was going full blast, I
approached USAFE to request the return of some of the planes tem-
porarily assigned there. Despite the fact that I thougjht there was no
urgent need for them in that theater, and there was elsewhere, USAFE
would not relinquish them. The command was looking at only the local
picture. It might need them. It didn't seem to realize I had the capability
to return them in a hurry if the situation there really did require them.
At any rate, I could not pry them loose. I did borrow planes from the
Air Materiel Command and from SAC, but these planes were inade-
quately equipped with crews and with specffic spare parts. (They were
of a different model.) We could not get full utilization out of them.
And in the meantime, good C-124's were in Europe sitting on the
ground or, at best, flymg low-priority missions.

In a country known the whole world over for efficiency and know-
how, this situation is doubly extravagant. Today the efficient operation
of airlift is a science carried out by trained and dedicated experts in
air trampoTt— professionals. In commands other than MATS, transport
planes are usually administered by combat-trained officers who do not
imderstand airlift and aren't particularly interested in learning this
difficult and different specialty. Result: Planes with tremendous capac-
ity standing idle, aU over the world. These planes now have such a

322 / OVER THE HUMP

vital mission they deserve to be managed by a senior commander and
an experienced staff wliose whole thinking is devoted to the airlift
mission, such as we find in MATS today.

It would be a natural assumption on the part of the pubUc that the
majority of air transport planes would be in the au: transport service.
This is not the case. Transport aircraft are so scattered throughout
the Department of Defense that it is impossible to say just exactly
how many of these planes there are, and where and under whose com-
mand they can be found. It is safe to say that there are more transport
planes in the Department of Defense which are not in the Military Air
Transport Service than there are in it! These planes are assigned to
the Navy, the Marines, and even to many other commands of the Air
Forces. Over 350 troop carriers are assigned to the Tactical Air Com-
mand. If you think there is no connection, you are right; there is none.
No matter what you call these planes, troop carriers or anything else,
they are air transport, and it makes little sense for TAG or any other com-
mand to control this great potential. Not only by nomenclature, but by
training and dedication, the officers of the staff of TAG are combat men,
with their thoughts properly directed, first and foremost, to the combat
mission of that command, to fight with bombs and guns. Troop-
carrier au-craft are not combat planes, but transport. Their mission
is not to destroy the enemy, but to deUver troops and equipment
safely and efficiently. Thus occurs the paradox of men trained for one
unique miUtary specialty administering equipment designed for another,
functionally and philosophically different.

To reorganize miUtary airlift properly would requke the attention
of the Joint Ghiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, or both. AU trans-
port planes in the Department of Defense— Army, Navy, Marines, as
well as aU Air Force—should be placed under the command of a new
force. Probably it would be good to rename it the MiUtary AirUft
Command— MAC, as suggested by Mr. Rivers. There would be no ques-
tion here, incidentaUy, of inter-service or intra-service rivalry; air trans-
port men from both the Air Force and the Navy have been proving their
abiUty to work together in MATS for over fifteen years.

MAC would be administered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff along the
same principles on which the Theater Priorities Board was administered
in Korea. AU transport planes would be under this one command, and

Observations and Recommendations / 323

would be loaned out to the other services in strength commensurate to
perform the airlift missions of each service. These planes would be
flown at a steady utilization rate. Rigid controls would be set up to
recognize top-priority missions; valuable planes and even more valuable
crews would not be placed on the shelf until the need arises to correct
the mistakes of some supply officer. It is far cheaper, I assure you,
to get a good logistics section in the first place. Fortunately today,
logisticians in the Air Force, and the DOD as a whole, are better
trained than ever before. We have high-class people, fully qualified,
and mistakes should be at a minimum. Further, under such rigid
controls, when the nation needs airlift for an immediate emergency,
there would be no question of some commander holding on to hundreds
of planes simply because he was too concerned over the local situa-
tion, too timid or too ornery to let them go. In short, in order to achieve
a stronger defense, and to greatly reduce expense, I strongly recom-
mend the consolidation of all transport aircraft into a single command.
The savings to the taxpayer in this area alone would be enormous.

Though it may seem contradictory at first glance, I would further
reconmiend that a special group of akcraft consisting of helicopters,
airplanes capable of vertical take-off, and light transports capable of
landing on rough terrain be provided the Army but be flown and operated
by the Air Force. Flying is the Air Force job. I do not advocate the
growth of a new Army Air Corps with its expensive duplication of
flying schools, research, and air depots. Should it be necessary to move
troops into battle overseas, the heavy planes of the airlift command
would transport troops from the continent to a staging area close to the
combat zone. At this point the men would deplane, be provided with food,
rest, and exercise, and then board Air Forces-operated helicopters or light
transports for the final, or assault, flight. This is the only practical
way to move troops into combat over long distances. The idea that you
can fly troops for thousands of miles across the ocean, join up with other
aircraft in neat formations over the assault area, m fair weather or foul,
and then, after many hours of flying without landing, drop combat troops
in an orderly fashion, ready to fight, makes little sense.

The aircraft has brought a thrilling new ingredient to the fascinating
study of military tactics. At West Point, and then on a higher level
during my years working with the Infantry at Fort Benning, I shared

324 / OVER THE HUMP

the enthusiasm of the Infantry oflScer for flanking and enveloping
movements. Today, thanks to aviation, we have added an exciting new
dimension, vertical envelopment In the Swarmer exercise I talked with
veterans of paratroop actions in Europe in World Wax II, and worked
closely with the jumpers on maneuvers. Then, in Korea, I was closely
involved with the 187th Regiment jump at Sukchon and Sunchon.
From these observations I am convinced that the new tactic of vertical
envelopment must be further refined. Save for a very few drops on
special occasions involving small numbers of men, the parachute could
well be forgotten in vertical envelopment. Think of all the great au:-
bome assaults in the short history of vertical envelopment and tell me
one paratroop operation that was a complete success? Surely not the
drop on Sicily, or Normandy, or at Nijmegen. If there was one suc-
cessful drop in all of World War II, it was the German capture of
Crete. Even this was so costly, militarfly, that the Germans never
again had an effective parachute force.

Bill Bowen, who commanded the paratroops at Sukchon-Sunchon,
told me that this was the most successful drop ever made. He presented
me with a still-warm Russian-made carbine taken from a North
Korean soldier as a token of his appreciation. I, too, felt that the Air
Force did the best job it could on that operation, but a subsequent
study of the operation has dimmed its aura of success. The end run
with armored cars and tanks reached the drop zone so quickly that
we questioned the necessity of the drop. Then too, of the 4,615 men
who jumped that day, one man was killed and forty-six injured; thuty-
eight of those injured had to be evacuated. In addition, several injuries
were reported later by men who didn't want to admit they were hurt.
Two of the injuries were broken backs.

Obviously, then, the regiment did not go into battle with a full
strength of able-bodied men. As for equipment, two of the twelve
howitzers dropped were inoperable, two of the four 90 mm. guns
dropped would not work, four of twenty-eight jeeps were lost, and
two of four three-quarter-ton trucks were lost. By contrast, we had
airlanded this same regunent at Kimpo some weeks before. I had
seen them go into combat in full strength, with a great deal more
equipment and ammunition than we were able to drop at Sukchon-
Sunchon — ^five thousand tons instead of three hundred. Compared

Observations and Recommendations / 325

with Kimpo, that "best drop" at Sukchon-Sunchon was more of a
waste of highly tramed men and valuable equipment.

There are other serious drawbacks to vertical envelopment by para-
troops. The special training paratroopers receive is most e]q>ensive.
Further, in spite of the additional expense of this special training, the
men come out of it prepared only for short, hard periods of figihting,
not the long haul.

As for dropping materiel, I have already noted how in Korea we
flew only a small per cent of the total flying time in air-drop missions;
yet, because special and heavy equipment necessary for these air drops
was installed on every plane, a very large per cent of the big aurlift
mission was penalized. Installation of this type of equipment is an
unfortunate compromise in the C-141.

In modem war we will always need some air-drop capacity of both
men and materiel, but the proportion should be very small. Due to their
very excellence m selection, their enthusiasm for jumping, and their
esprit de corps, paratroop officers will scream at this recommendation
that what they so fervently believe in be curtailed. Nevertheless, the
development of the helicopter and now the vertiplane has made the
gallantry of jumping large units into battle of questionable value.

The tendency to cling to what one knows best seems to be particularly
strong in the military. As Joseph Alsop, the well-known columnist,
wrote in May, 1963, "It is in the nature of cavalrymen to believe in
cavaky, bomber generals to believe in bombers, carrier admkals to
believe in carriers. When the weapons they believe in become obsolete,
generals and admirals usually become obsolete at the same moment,
because they will not change then: beliefs." He cited as an example the
classic case of General Billy Mitchell, shot down by the Army's
cavalrymen and the battleship admirals of the Navy.

I have been dismayed recently by the action of retired senior ad-
mirals and generals, men who supported General Mitchell years ago,
and men whom I greatly respect today, attacking with almost vicious
vituperation Secretary McNamara. It is true that under McNamara
the Air Force lost several important decisions: the abrupt termination
of the Skybolt missile; the virtual termination of the RS70, the planned
supersonic manned bomber; and the consolidation of Air Force and
Navy plans for separate jet fighters into one plane, the TFX,

326 / OVER THE HUMP

Though I feel that some of McNamara's decisions should have goiifv
the other way, I still defend the Secretary's right, more properly
obligation, to render a decision. Operating in the vastness of scientific
knowledge of today, it is far from easy to make such decisions. It
would seem that , the analysis, determination, and courage necessary
would be admired by military people rather than scorned. It is in the
sound American tradition that the military remain under civilian con-
trol, and in McNamara we got a pretty strong civilian. It was none too
soon.

The whole question of civilian versus military control, and the life
story of Robert Strange McNamara, are beyond the scope of this book.
I do feel qualified, however, to comment on one criticism made of
McNamara or any other civilian official— his comparatively short period
of military service. McNamara served less than three years as an
Army officer in World War 11, assigned to the thought-provoking,
brain-stretching area of statistical control. The fact that he did not
serve many more years m the military, putting m his stint in such
intellectual assignments as mess officer or adjutant or PX officer, or
boring holes through the sky in formation flymg, would not dis-
qualify him from making a decision bearing on national strategy.

Over the years I have found that men from civilian life make
excellent military personnel with little prior training. I have known
and worked closely with scores of such men, but a few names come
inmiediately to mmd— C. R. Smith, Temple Bowen, Hammie Heard,
Gordon Rust — all brilliant and dependable men who served their
country well in uniform. Some of our greatest military leaders in World
War II and subsequent years were not from the academy. Among the
names that come immediately to mind are General George C. Marshall,
General Curtis LeMay, Chief of Staff, USAF; General Thomas S. Power,
commander of SAC; General John K. Gerhart, commander of NORAD;
Lieutenant General Harold L. George, commander of the ATC in World
War II, and Lieutenant General "Chesty" Puller, a great Marine.

In air transport we have always had to get along without many grad-
uates of the service academies. When I commanded the Hump, less than
ten of the seven thousand officers under my command were West
Pointers. They were all excellent men, but then: efforts were overshad-
owed by the excellent work of thousands of others.

Observations and Recommendations / 327

The service academies do indeed provide a vital ingredient to our
military establishment, a solid but small core of professional men to
carry on the continuity of the services. For the rest, however, I believe
that our colleges and universities turn out a fine product on whom die
nation can call with assurance when the DOD and Congress determine
the method. From my own personal experience, therefore, I believe
that proposals to expand the enrollment of the service academies could
well be questioned.

Also on the strength of my own personal experience, I would minunize
the machine record system in the selection of personnel. As a commander
who recognizes that the success of his major operations has been due
largely to the enthusiasm, intelligence, and energy of staff members, I
strongly advocate the selection of personnel through personal knowledge
rather than by machine. A commander should have great leeway in
selection of his key staff, particularly when the command has an urgent
mission. I have always tried to fill my immediate staff from people I
knew personally — men who could and would produce, men who were
able and completely trustworthy, men who had the peculiar technical
knowledge needed. At times, however, I had to take men chosen by the
machine, whom I did not know, for key positions. Usually these men
proved to be quite capable, but on the occasions when they were not,
the success of the mission was impaired, and others had to take on their
jobs as extra work. It often takes a few months to determme whether
a new and unknown addition to the staff will fit m and be able to pro-
duce; during this period the commander, who in his vital position carries
the full responsibility, and others on the staff, can hardly have complete
confidence and trust in the new man. From my own experience I am
convinced that tune can be saved and the chances for the success of the
mission improved by permitting the commander to choose his own men
through his own knowledge of them rather than have someone sent in
by a machine.

Just as the conunander should have the privilege of personally select-
ing his staff, so should he also have full control of both personnel and
equipment. In both the Berlin and the Korean airlifts my job was made
much more difficult by divided authority. Today we hear much of the
new, highly touted United States Strike Command (STRICOM) and its
military potential. In an actual campaign, however, the commander of

328 / OVER THE HUMP

STRICOM might find himself operatmg under the same handicaps I
faced in Berlin and Korea. For STRICOM is an operational command
only. It draws its men and equipment from the Continental Army Com-
mand and the Tactical Air Command, both of which retain logistic and
administrative responsibilities. This limited command may function well
durmg maneuvers and short exercises, but after two weeks of operating
under such an over-balanced operational setup, STRICOM, or any other
command, would run into trouble.

I learned on the Hump that if the commander takes an interest in the
wdfare of his people, providing them to the best of his abiKty with decent
living conditions, food, and recreation, they in turn will take care of his
mission. Loyalty should extend both ways. In this regard, I have always
opposed rotation programs which send personnel overseas for long
periods of tune without then: families. Today most of our officer and
senior nonconunissioned personnel are married; less than 20 per cait of
our pilots are single. When you tear an American from his wife and
children for six months every two or three years, you can hardly expect
him to give you his best in return, or to remain in the service. Thus I
heartily commend the recent order of the Secretary of Defense terminat-
ing the six-month rotation plan, and strong^ recommend that his new
policy be continued.

Let me make it plain that I am not proposing any large withdrawal of
troops from overseas stations. On the contrary, I believe that we should
maintain a good, strong cadre of men and equipment in strategic places
over the world. In case of emergency, these smaU professional forces
could then be augmented speedily, through airlift, by troops from the
zone of interior. But our personnel overseas should be permitted and
encouraged to lead stable lives under the best possible conditions, and
with their families.

Further, as long as American personnel are overseas, the fullest pos-
sible use should be made of them. Though I share the nation's enthu-
siasm for tile Peace Corps, and wish the members of this dramatic new
organization every conceivable success, I can't help but pomt out that
America has been maintaming a potential Peace Corps m many coun-
tries of the world for years. I refer to the miUion-plus Americans who
are akeady overseas— military personnel, civiUan employees of the mili-
tary, and tiie families of both. As our community relations program in

Observations and Recommendations / 329

USAFE proved, this large army of Americans has a great opportunity
to promote good relations in the countries in which they are stationed;
in numbers alone, it is vastly superior to the Peace Corps. By all means,
let's encourage the Corps and increase its numbers. But let us also en-
courage our people who are already overseas with the military to promote
friendly relations and good will through both organized program and
hxdividual good fellowship.

I'm glad to see that some parts of the program we had in USAFE
have been resurrected by the current DOD leadership. Emphasis on
instruction of the language of the country is being increased, for example.
But there's still a long way to go before we reach the comprehension of
the all-mclusive and highly rewarding program in existence in USAFE
from 1953-1957. This program was successful. Everything we did is a
matter of record, and the salient points were consolidated into a com-
prehensive report. It any of our military or political leaders are interested
in furthering good will overseas, all they have to do is dust off a copy and
send it to the overseas commands.

Again, on the basis of personal experience, I would like to discuss the
controversial B-70 project. This is the proposed manned bomber which
would be capable of speeds up to twenty-one hundred miles per hour,
research and development of which have been drastically curtailed. When
I was deputy chief of staff for Operations in 1957, I studied this vast
project carefully to the point that I considered myself completely knowl-
edgeable on it However, it is as a student of air transport that I wish
to defend the B-70, now that the administration has stated both the
necessity and the intention to develop a two-thousand-mile-per-hour
transport airplane at a cost of about one billion dollars and has thus
reopened the issue. More than two hundred million dollars have already
been put into the research and development of the B-70 — ^why duplicate
both the result and expense? If we are gomg to have a supersonic trans-
port plane, by all means let us build it on the solid framework of the
B-70. We have historical precedent for this, particularly in the case of
the modem jet liner, for the Boeing 707 evolved directly from the mili-
tary tanker, the KC-135, and the tanker from the B-47 and B-52. Just
as the research and development of those military planes paved the way
for the production of the jet liner, so the B-70 can pave the way for this
new supersonic transport. Accelerating the project will help us get the

330 / OVER THE HUMP

supersonic transport sooner, as weU as maintaining our manned bomber
fleet— two birds with one ouday of money. It would be carrying on the
^ctum of getting there "fustest widi die mostest" in bodi military and
civilian application. Already American airlines are looking abroad for
supersonic airplanes. We have always led the world in commercial avia-
tion; this is no tune to relinquish our leadership.

The greatest asset of this country is our technology, our industrial
production, our tremendous capacity to turn out materials in peace or
war. In the event of war we would be vastly outnumbered by the hordes
of manpower the Communist world would throw in against us. It is our
superior technology which alone can even up the battle. But if we are
going to make maxunum use of our superior technology, we must have
mobiUty and flexibiUty. It would be ridiculous to fight the enemy always
on a man-to-man basis. It is with the combination of superior technology
and trained, intelligent men armed with its product, that we are equal to
any hostile force in the world. But we must bring our superiority into
play at the time we want, where we want it, and in the manner in which
we choose to employ it. The use of mass air transport can assure us that
we will get the most out of our most valuable asset.

Does air transport cost more? Only in the penny-wise, pound-foolish
sense. To supply our fighting forces with any given item reqmres what
we call a pipeline of supply. Supplies move through this pipeline at a
speed determmed by the means of transportation used. In World War II,
for example, it took 106 days to get supplies from the United States to
the combat commander in Germany— a rate of about one and a half
miles per hour. Inasmuch as an mfantryman could hardly shoot off a
round of shells, then wait 106 days for the next batch to arrive, it was
necessary to keep the pipeline continuaUy full. Thus 106 days' worth of
cartridges had to be constantly in transit, creeping along from factory
to gun.

When I took command of USAFE in 1953, a typical aircraft engine
would be in service for five months, then be sent back to a mamtenance
depot to be completely overhauled. For the next seven months, the
engine would be in the mamtenance pipeline, actually spending more
time in surface transit and sitting in warehouses than in mamtenance.
We estimated that to fly this engine from the plane to the maintenance

Observations and Recommendations / 331

depot and back to the plane would get it out of this maintenance pipe-
line three times faster.

Suppose there were ten thousand engines in a world-wide year-round
operational maintenance qrcle. Even if airlift would eliminate only one
month of the cycle, we would save one-twelfth of ten thousand, or 833
engines. An engine could easily cost $200,000; airlift would save $166,-
600,000 right there.

Those of us in air transport worked hard to brmg about the airlifting
of such items, and we were largely successful, with, of course, savings
in the hundreds of millions to the American taxpayer. But the Air Force
still does not utilize airlift for high-cost items to the fullest extent. The
Army avails itself of the economics of air transport for high-cost items
still less, and the Navy is far behmd.

Even so, the military services are leadmg the way in air transport; the
civilian world is only begmning to grasp its economic implications. Some
business leaders are beginning to awaken to the money-saving advantages
of fast air delivery of high-cost items, but in general busmess lags far
behmd the Defense Department in this regard. Although the actual cost
of transporting a ton by plane from A to B is no doubt more than by
surface, that is far from the whole story. Costs pile up in the warehouse,
in the trucks, and on the docks as well as in the ship or the freight car.
Don't forget the extra costs for heavy packaging and special handling,
the higher msurance, danger of pilferage, capital costs of the pipeline,
and even the cost of obsolescence. Taking all these into consideration,
air transportation for high-cost items becomes the most economical.

Of all goods moved through all transportation systems today, less than
one-tenth of one per cent is moved by air. Government airlift contracts
are let at a rate of about fifteen cents per ton-mile. Aklmes now can
show a good profit at this figure. With modem equipment, efficient opera-
tion, and full loads in both directions, airlines could show a profit at a
rate of eleven cents per ton-mile.

Proceeding still further, such advances have been made in aircraft
design that it is possible today to build planes capable of lopping still
another four cents per ton-mile off this figure, bringing the rate down
to seven cents. This figure happens to be the standard shipping rate for
many items moved by rail or truck. What I am saying, then, is that it is
possible, with efficient operation and with planes our aircraft industry

332 / OVER THE HUMP

can build today, to compete directly with surface transportation in the
shippmg of many items. I think it is safe to assume that many manufac-
turers and many customers would, with the price being equal, prefer the
advantages of air transportation.

Surely it is not unreasonable to postulate that, under such conditions,
a total of one per cent of all goods shipped would be shipped by air. Yet
such a modest figure is explosive in its implications. It would mean an
increase of tenfold — ^ten times the number of planes, ten times the per-
sonnel, aloft and on the ground, ten times the investment, and ten times
the return.

In my years with military air transport, I have seen the entke concept
grow from a mere nothing to a vital military operation and a huge civilian
industry. In comparison to the years ahead, however, the pioneers of air
transport have but scratched tiie surface. We have brought air transport
to a stable foundation. The young air-transport men of today and tomor-
row will participate in the explosive expansion of this excitmg complex
to heights we never dreamed of. I wish I were starting all over again
with them.

Index

Abadaiiy 53

Abbey, Col. E. D., 90, 92
Accidents; see Crashes and accidents
Ackerman, Rep. Ernest R., 6
Adams, Maj. Gen, E. S., 20
Adamson, Col. Hans, 30-32
Aeromedical evacuation

AIREVAC (MATS) , 284

Hump Airlift, 117

Korea (Combat Cargo Conunand),
238, 244-47, 253-57, 258, 263

Wounded Warrior Airlift, 286
Air Forces

5th (Korea), 231, 232, 233, 236, 241,
248, 259, 260

10th, 60, 114

14th (China), 63, 114, 116-24 pas-
sim, 130
Airlifts, 8-10

Berlin, 152-55, 158-59, 162-224
Chilean earthquake, 286
Congo (United Nations), 286, 295-
96

Hump (EUmalayan), 43-135
Italy, 272

Korea, 229-64 passim

Lebanon, 281-82, 285

Magic Carpet (Mecca pilgrims), 286

Operation Big Slam/Puerto Pine

(Puerto Rico), 307-13
Operation Deep Freeze (Arctic), 286
Quemoy and Matsu (Formosa Strait),

282, 285, 288
Safe Haven (Hungary), 286
strategic, 284
Wounded Warrior, 286
Air Materiel Command, 26, 189, 190,

193, 289, 321
Airport construction, China» 49, 125,
130

Air supply
Hump Airlift, 59-60, 62-63, 117, 123
tonnage production, 112-16, 128-
29, 130

Korean War, 9, 228, 232^35, 237,
243-44, 247-48, 252, 255, 257,
258, 259-60, 263-64
Air Transport Association, 291-97
Air Transport Command
European Wing, 38
Ferrying Division, 28-42, 50-51
India-China Division (Hump Airlift),

43-135
Northern Division, 34
Albuquerque, N. M., 21
Alexander, Col. Edward H., 19, 22, 61,
62

Alexander, Holmes, 299
Allison, Charles G., 81
Almond, Gen. Edward H., 237, 253
Alsop, Joseph, quoted, 325
Amazon River, 32-34
American Legion, 291, 300
Arctic

Operation Deep Freeze, 286
'Vhite-out" or 'flying in milk," 34
Army Air Corps, U.S.
Ferrying Command (World War 11),
11-12, 19-28
Army Transportation Corps, 203, 204,
219, 222

Arnold, Gen. H. H., 18, 35, 38, 61, 130,

155, 156
Ascension Island, 29, 33
Ashiya, 231, 233, 234, 246, 251
Assam, 43, 54, 55, 60, 77, 82, 128
Atlantic Ferrying Organization (At-

fero), 18
Attlee, Clement, 201-2
Austin, James W., 303
Azores, 53

Baker, Dr. George P., 303
Baker, Col. Robert, 44
Baldwin, Hanson W., 313
Baldwin, Rep. John F., Jr., 299
Barkley, Alben, 194
Barrackpore Base, 97

334 / INDEX

Bartck, Pvt. John, 30-32
Beau, Maj\ Victor, 12, 16-17
Bel6m, 33, 34

Bennett, Constance, 209, 221
Berlin, Irving, 194

Berlin Airlift, 9, 152-55, 158-59, 162-
224

bases, American and British, 170, 172,

186, 199, 209-11
coal, 159, 178, 182, 203-5, 207, 219
Combined Airlift Task Force

(CALTF), 186-89,214
flight procedures (corridors and

routes), 170, 172-76
key officer personnel under Tunner,

163-65

maintenance problems, 164, 169, 182-

83, 192-94, 196-97
morale problems, 175, 176-79, 191-

92, 194-95
Navy participation, 214-15
Operation Little Vittles, 207-8
Russian harassments, 185-86
tonnage figures, 159, 160, 180-81,

194, 198-99, 207, 209, 218, 222:

Gung Ho Day (Easter, 1949),

219-22

USAFE conmiand difficulties, 189-97
passim

Berlin blockade, 156-58, 216-18
Bettinger, Col. Sterling, 152-54, 172,
175

Bevan, Ernest, 202-3
Bhamo, 59, 128
Birchard, Col. Glenn, 230
Blair, Clay, Jr., quoted, 297, 314
Bolte, Maj. Gen. Charles, 250-51, 303
Bonniley, Col. Richard, 13 1
Borklund, Bill, 299

Bowcn, Temple, 64-65, 73, 88, 92-93,
156, 163, 326

Bowen, CoL W. S., 238, 239, 324

Brahmaputra River, 43, 45, 59, 128

Brazil, 20, 33, 34

Brenner, Sgt., 99

Brereton, Maj. Gen. Lewis H., 60

Brett, Maj. Gen. George H., 22

Brucker, Wilbur, 305

Buckeburg, 186, 210

Bunker, CoL William, 222

Burma-China air route; see Hump Air-
lift

Burma Road, 58-59, 129, 130

Burrows, Brig. Gen. Paul, 38
Burtonwood Maintenance Depot, 169,
192-93, 197, 276

Cairo, 53

Calcutta, 59, 60, 87, 96, 136, 137, 146

Campbell, CoL Lonnie, 131

Cannon, CoL Andrew, 32, 33, 69-70,

128, 131, 139 -
Cannon, Sen. Howard W., 299
Cannon, Lt. Gen. John K„ 188, 189,

191, 195, 196, 209, 212
Cannon Project, 139-42, 143
Casablanca, 53
Celle, 170,211,221
Chabua Base, 43, 49, 63, 97, 98, 109
Chanyi Airfield, 78, 127
Ch&teauroux, 275, 278
Chavez, Sen. Dennis, 313
Chennault, Gen. Clair F., 62, 93, 116-

24, 188

Cherry, Capt. William T., Jr., 30-32

Chiang Kai-shek, 60, 62, 116, 120

Children
evacuation from Seoul, Korea, 262
Operation Little Vittles, 207-8
West German airlift from Berlin,
274-75

Chilean AirUft, 286

China

and Hump Airlift, 58-61

Orient Project proposed for, 137,

144-45, 151
transport of 94th Army to Shanghai,
139-42
Chindwin Valley, 46, 47
Chinese in India-China Division, ATC,

124-28
Chinnampo, 243
Chongchon River, 243, 261
Chosin Reservoir, 252, 253, 263
Churchill, Winston, quoted, 130
Cincinnati, 28, 138

Civil Aeronautics Authority, 175, 190
Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF), 285,

302-3, 315
Clark, Lt., 75-77

Clarke, Gen. Bruce C, 307-8, 311
Clay, Gen. Lucius D., 157, 158, 159,

161, 182, 206, 221
Coates, Col. Dudley, 69, 73
Cochran, Jacqueline, 35-37

INDEX / 335

Collins, Maj. Tom, 225, 228, 229, 239,
240, 241

Combat Cargo Command (CCC), 229-
64

Congo Airlift (United Nations), 286,

295-96
Coulter, Col. Jack, 209, 221
Crashes and accidents, 23, 27

Amazon River, 32-34

Arctic, 34

Berlin Airlift, 153,217,218
Combat Cargo Command (Korea),
257

India-China Division, ATC (Hump Air-
lift), 45, 46-47, 52, 54-55, 63,
68-69, 74, 80-82, 93, 113-14,
134

Pacific Ocean, 30-32; see also Flying
Safety Program

Dacca, 95

DaVania, Col. Richard, 140-41

DeAngelis, Lt. John J., 30-32

Dearbein, Maj. James A., Ill

DeBona, Lt. Joe C, 32-34

Dergoan Base, 86

Dhahran Air Base, 269

Diebold, Lt. William F., 99

Doolittle, Gen. James H., 60, 175, 195

Douglas, Donald W., 71

Douglas, Lt Col. James H., Jr., 52-55,

63, 298, 303, 305
Douglas, Maj. Gen. Robert, 219
Duncan, Col. Asa, 17
Dutch Guiana, 33

Eaker, Gen. Ira, 115
Emrick, Sgt. Horace, 76
Erding, 194, 276

Evacuation of wounded; see Aeromed-
ical evacuation

Falkenberg, Jmx, 194
Far Eastern Air Forces (FEAF), 229,
250-51, 254
Combat Cargo Command (Korea),
229-64

Fassberg, 170, 186, 209-10, 221
Fernandez, Lt. Col. Manuel, 163-64,

167, 176, 228, 234, 238, 239,

240

Ferrying Command, Air Corps, 8, 11-
12, 19-29

Ferrying Division, Air Transport Com-
mand, 28-42, 50-51

Fisher, Paul, quoted, 198-99

Flickengcr, Lt. Col. Donald, 84

Flying Safety Program, 41-42
India-China Division, ATC, 68-69,
102-6, 114-16, 132; see also
Crashes and accidents

Forman, Brig. Gen. Robert D. (Red),
14, 43, 44-45, 50, 67-68, 143,
152-54, 163, 168, 172, 219, 230,
239, 254, 297

Frankfurt, 176

Fryklund, Richard, quoted, 312

Fuhlsbiittel, 210

Fulda, 152, 172, 173, 213

Gander, Newfoundland, 20, 53
Ganeval, Gen. Jean, 211-13
Ganges River, 137

Gatow Airport, 168, 170, 174, 201, 211

George, Gen. Harold L., 28, 36, 50, 52,
56, 62, 63-64, 85, 88, 112, 114,
115, 125, 130, 145, 148, 149,
155, 326

Gerhart, Gen. John K., 326

German Youth Association, 273-74

Gibson, Catherine, 13, 165-66

Gillies, Mrs. Betty Hyler, 36, 37-38

Gimbel, Bruce, 23-24

Glass, Frederick M., 303

Godfrey, Gen., 103

Goldwater, Barry, 40, 299

Goose Bay, Labrador, 38

Grant, Maj. Gen. David, 23-24

Great Falls, Mont., 197, 218

Greenland, 34

Guilbert, Maj. Edward A., 163, 219,
228, 232, 249, 258

Hagaru-ri, 253, 255, 258
Halvorsen, Lt. Gail S., 207-8
Hamhung, 254, 255
Hamm, Col. Earl, 93, 104-5
Hampton, Col. Edward, 240-41
Hanoi, 142-43

Hardin, Brig. Gen. Thomas O., 50, 52-

53, 55, 62-63, 88, 113
Harding, William B., 303
Hamed, Maj. Al, 141
Harriss, Maj. Gen. Field, 234
Harvey, Maj. Alva T., 20
Harz Mountains, 168, 172

336 / INDEX

Hastings, Eddie, 93, 163
Hastings Mfll, 87
Hatcher, George, 230
Hawaii, 20

Haynes, Col. Caleb V., 20
Healy, Mr., 140-41

Heard, Lt. Col. HamHton, 69, 73, 87,

163, 326
Henderson, Dr. Elmer, 244
Henebry, Brig. Gen. John P., 263
Hickam Field, 30

Himalaya Mountains; see Hump Airlift
Hoag, Brig. Gen. Earl S., 62
Hogg, Capt. Robert, 165, 230
Hohenberg, John, 291-92
Hooghly River, 137
Hope, Bob, 194^95, 237
Howley, Col. Frank L., 217
Hukawng Valley, 81

Hump (Himalayan) Airlift, 8-9, 43-
135

Japanese air attacks, 75-81
purpose, 58

See also India-China Division, ATC
Hungarian refugees, Safe Haven Air-
lift, 9, 286
Hungnam, 253, 254, 259
Hyde, Group Capt. Noel C, 210

Inchon, 231, 232-33, 234, 260
India-China Division, Air Transport
Command
Army Air Forces Day (1945) record,
131-34

base flight quotas and competition,

110-12

Flying Safety Program, 68-69, 102-

6, 114-16, 132
health and medical problems, 55-56,

84-85, 92, 103-4, 107
jungle indoctrination, 100-1
key officers under Tunner, 64-70, 93
morale and personnel problems, 51,

55, 57, 85-92, 103-5, 108
postwar activities, 138-49
Production-line Maintenance (PLM),

93-95, 104, 107-8, 132-33
Search and Rescue Unit, 97-100
supply problems, 107-8
tonnage production, 112-16, 128-29,

130

troop transportation, 124-28
Wings, 70, 106, 128, 131

Iraq, 20

Irrawaddy River, 47, 49, 59
Itazuke,239

Jacobs, Sgt. Marvm H., 98-99
Johnson, Louis, 226

Kaczmarczyk, Sgt. Alex, 30-32

Karachi, 53, 60, 98, 147

Kellums, Lt. Col. Homer, 111

Kennedy, John F., 318-19

Kent, George, quoted, 275

Kimpo Airfield, 232, 233, 234, 238, 239,

240, 241
Kodiak,225
Korean War
air-supply operations, 9, 228, 232-35,
243^4, 247-48, 252, 255, 258,
259-60, 263-64
Combat Cargo Command (CCC),

229-64
military units

1st: Cavalry Division, 242, 260;
Marine Division, 235, 242, 252,
253, 254, 256
7th: Infantry Division, 235, 236;

Marine Regiment, 253, 254
8th Army, 232, 234, 236, 237, 238,

242, 243, 252, 258, 260, 261
101st Airborne Division, 230
187th Airborne Regiment, 230,

232-33, 238, 242, 244, 324
801st Medical Air Evacuation

Squadron, 246, 258
2348th Quartermaster Airborne Air
Supply and Packaging Company,
244
Koto-ri, 258
Kumon Mountains, 47
Kunming, 59, 58, 117, 120, 121, 127
Kurmitola Base, 109
Kuter, Maj- Gen. Laurence S., 156, 159,
160, 162, 190, 197, 198, 226,
227 229
Kweilen, 117, 120, 121

La Farge, Lt. CoL Oliver, The Eagle in

the Egg, quoted, 27
Lambert, Capt. A. E., 99
Lashio, 58, 128

Lebanon Airlift, 9, 281-82, 285

INDEX / 337

LeMay, Maj. Gen. Curtis, 20, 158, 160,
161-62, 166, 182, 186, 187, 189-
90, 307, 316, 326

Lemnitzer, Gen. Lyman L., 307, 311,
316

Lend-Lease Act (1941), 18
Lhasa, 81

Liuchow, 117, 120, 138-42 passim
Long Beach, Calif., 22, 32, 70
Love, Mrs. Nancy Harkness, 35-39

passim

Love, Maj. Robert M., 34, 35
Liibeck, 210
Luce, Clare Boothe, 272
Lucius, Lt, 75-77
Luliang River, 84-85
Lykins, Lt. Paul O., 154

MacArthur, Gen. Douglas, 24, 92, 138,
229, 231, 232, 239, 241, 242

McDill Field, 24, 25

McMahon, Lt. Col. Orval O., 163, 167,
228, 232, 248-49

McNamara, Robert S., 319, 325-26

McNamey, Gen. Joseph, 226

Magic Carpet Airlift, 286

Malkin, Richard, quoted, 181

Mandalay, 47, 128

Martin, Sgt. Tony, 108

MATS; see Military Air Transport Serv-
ice

Mekong River, 48

Memphis, Tenn., Air Corps Detach-
ment, 13-14, 15-16
Merer, Air Conunodore J. W. F., 188
Miami, 32, 62, 110
Military Air Transport Service

(MATS), ^10, 156, 159, 190
Congressional hearings on moderni-
zation, 300-7, 314-15
development and function, 283-87
opposition to, civilian, 287-88, 290-
300

under Tunner: as Deputy Com-
mander, 159-62, 226-29; as
Commander, 281-317

Milton, Col. Theodore Ross, 164

Misamari Base, 97, 111

Mishmi HiUs, 45

Mohanbari Base, 98

Monroney, Sen. S. Mike, 3 15

Moscow, 20

Mosely, Maj. Thomas L., 25

Mourey, Richard L., 315
Myitkyina, 47, 54, 59, 75, 103, 128

Naga Hills, 45-46, 48, 59, 76, 83
Natal, 33

National Association of Women Pilots,
39

Neumann, Franz, 217
Nixon, Richard M., 319
Norden, Capt. Arthur, 68-69
Norstad, Gen, Lauris, 227, 247, 266
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), 266-68

Oberpfaffenhofen, 169, 192
O'Daniel, Gen. Mike, 242
Olds, Col. Robert, 19-29 passim
Operation Big Slam/Puerto Pine, 307-
14

Operation Deep Freeze, 286
Operation Hope, 143-44
Operation Little Vittles, 207-8
Operation Vittles; see Berlin Airlift
Oran, 32, 33

Orient Project, 137-38, 144-48, 149-51

Pardue, Right Rev. Austin, quoted, 278-
79

Partridge, Lt. Gen. Earle E., 231, 239

Patkai Range, 46

Patterson, W. A., 298

Pennario, Leonardo, 108

Philippines, 24, 25

Phillips, Brig. Gen. Thomas R., 299

Pilots, 265
Air Force, recruiting, 16, 21, 23
Berlin Airlift, 170, 172, 175-77
Ferrying Command, 24-25, 27-28
Ferrying Division (ATC), 28-30, 37,
40-41

Hump Airlift, 51, 61, 63, 66-67,

101-2
rotation system, 89-90
training, 16, 21, 27, 28, 40-41, 102-

3, 284
women, 35-39
Plane delivery. World War II
Atlantic Ferrying Organization, 18
domestic, 17-18

Ferrying Command, 11-12, 19-28
Ferrying Division, ATC, 28-42
Plane models
B-17, 19, 24, 27, 30, 38

338 / INDBX

Plane models (coni.)
B-24, 20, 32, 34,110
B-25, 92, 98
B.26, 23
B-70, 329-30

C-46 (Curtiss Commando), 45, 62,

70, 81, 98, 110, 119, 121, 123,
126, 128, 230

C-47 (Douglas), 29, 54, 60, 62, 70,
79, 98, 99, 110, 119, 121, 123,
126, 158, 167, 170, 181, 197,
198, 199, 230, 238, 254, 255

C-54 (Douglas Skymaster), 40, 54,

71, 93, 94, 110, 121, 127, 128,
133, 142, 145, 152, 153, 155,
158, 159, 165, 167, 173, 181,
186, 187, 197, 198, 199, 207,
213, 216, 230, 233, 236, 237,
247, 248, 262

C-74 (Douglas), 197-98, 199, 200,

206
C-82, 206
C-87,47, 110

C-97 (Boeing Stratocruiser), 202-3,
206

C-109,71, 110

C-119 (Fairchild Flying Boxcar),
206, 230, 234, 236, 238, 241,
247, 254, 255, 256
C-124 (Globemaster), 200, 224, 281,

282, 289, 300-1, 321
C-141 (Lockheed), 320
1^5, 98, 99
P-38, 32, 33
P-39, 37-38
P-40, 77
P-47, 39
Porter, Capt. John E., 79-80
Power, Gen. Thomas S., 326
Prague, 213
Presque Isle, 38
Prestwick, Scotland, 20
Prevost, Maj. Jules, 94, 95, 164, 169,
192

Price, Rep. Melvin, 299

Pricer, Maj. Donald C, 98

Prindle, Col. Hoyt, 253

Puerto Rico, 32; Operation Big Slam/

Puerto Pine, 307-14
Puller, Lt. Gen. "Chesty," 326
Pusan, 229, 231, 236, 237, 245
Pyongyang, 235, 237, 238, 241, 242,

243, 259, 260

Quemoy and Matsu Islands (Formosa
Strait) Airlift, 9-10, 282, 285,
288

Rafts, rubber survival, 31-32
Rangoon, 58, 75
Reed, Gordon W., 303, 304
Reeves, Maj. Gen. Raymond J., 301,
304

Reichers, Lt. Louis T., 20, 24-25
Reuter, Ernst, 157,217
Reynolds, Sgt. James W., 30-32
Rhine-Main, 170, 172, 173, 191, 196,

201, 214
Rickenbacker, Col. Eddie, 30-32
Ridgway, Gen. Matthew B., 287
Rivers, John, 299

Rivers, Rep. L. Mendel, 299, 305, 314,

317, 322
Rockwell Field, 3, 14
Roosevelt, Franklin D.* 18-19, 35, 58,

62, 130
Routes, 12
to Africa, 32-33
around the world, 20
Crescent (to India via Azores), 39,

40, 53, 71
domestic, 40

Fireball Express (to India via South

Atiantic), 39, 40, 53, 62, 88
Great Circle, 226

Great Falls, Mont, to Fairbanks,

Alaska, 39
MATS, 283

North Atlantic, 20, 38, 39
Snowball (to United Kingdom), 40
South Atlantic, 20, 39

Royall, Kenneth, 194

Rust, Gordon M., 69, 98, 110, 142, 163,
326

Sacramento Air Depot, 3, 5, 7, 24
Sadiya, 59

Saliba, Jacob C, 304
Salween River, 47

Santsung Mountains ("the Rockpile"),
47, 48

Saunders, Air Marshal SSr Arthur P.

M., 186, 187
Schleswigland, 210
Schuffert, Sgt. John, 180
Scott Field, 281, 282, 298, 299
Seagraves, Dr. Gordon, 54

INDEX / 339

Seagraves, James F., 299-300
Search and rescue operations, 33-34

India-China Division, 79, 84, 97-100
Seoul, 231, 232, 233, 236, 243, 260, 262
Shanghai, 138, 139-43 passim
Sharp, Dudley C, 303, 305
Sharp, Evelyn, 36, 37-38
Shouse» Mrs. Jouett, 273
Sian, 117, 120, 127
Sims, Capt Harold, 165, 230
Sinanju, 243, 258
Singapore, 144
Sinmak, 237

Smith, Lt. Col. Allen D., 246

Smith, Maj. Gen. Cyrus R., 38, 50, 56,

61, 63, 64, 91, 112, 298, 326
Smith, Brig. Gen. Joseph, 159, 160, 162
Smith, Maj. Gen. Oliver P., 256, 258
Smith, Gen. Walter Bedell, 216
Sookerating Base, 77, 95, 109
Spaatz, Gen. Carl, 246
Spain, Lt. James, 80
Stalingrad Aklift, 183-84
Stiles, Kenneth, 67-69, 120, 163
Stilwell, Gen. Joseph W., 46, 54, 81
Strategic Air Command (SAC), 284,

294, 321

Stratemeyer, Lt Gen. George E., 21, 93,
114, 115, 120, 137, 145, 228-29,
230, 236, 239, 240, 241, 248,
251, 263

Struble, Vice Admiral Arthur, 233

Suez Canal crisis, 288

Sukchon, 238, 240, 241, 244

Sunchon, 238, 240, 241, 244

Swallwell, Lt. Col. Kenneth E., 163,
170, 176, 209, 210, 211

Sykes, Thomas, 74

Symington, Stuart, 194, 195-96, 197,
200, 201

Tactical Air Command, 322

Taegu, 237, 241, 245, 259

Takoradi, Gold Coast, 20

Talbott, Harold E., 279

Tali Mountain, 48

Task Force Times, 180

Taylor, Gen. Maxwell D., 316

Teague, Ike, 95, 163

Tegel Airport, 211-12

Tempelhof Airport, 152, 154, 168, 169-

70, 172, 173, 174, 210-11, 217,

220, 273

Tezgaon Base, 94-95

Thompson, Lt. William G., 164-65, 180

Thurmond, Sen. J. Strom, 299

Tok-chok-do Island, 240

Tongjoson Bay, 237

Towers, Maj. Roderick, 24-25

Towne, Capt Raymond, 164-65, 22^ ,

228,239,249, 278,311
Travelers Insurance Company, 41-42
Tribes

Burma: Kachins, Lisus, Shans, 83
China: Lolos, 83

India: Abors, Mishmis, Nagas, 82-83,
Dufla, 98-99
Tripoli, 53
Trippe, Juan, 149
Troop transportation
Chinese to Shanghai (Cannon Proj«

cct), 139-42, 143
India-China Division, ATC, 124-28
Korea (Combat Cargo Command),

234, 236-41, 253-59 passim
MATS, 284

Operation Hope (U.S. soldiers from

China to India), 143-44
"Swarmer" maneuver, 227

Truman, Harry, 159

Tunner, George, 41

Tunner, Mrs. Sarah, 148, 149

Tunner, William H.
Air Corps service: Rockwell Field, 3,
6, 14; Memphis Air Corps De-
tachment, 13-14, 15-16; Ran-
dolph Field, 14; Panama Canal
Zone, 14-15; Fort Benning and
Maxwell Field, 15; Military Per-
sonnel Division, Washington,
17-18

Air Force D^uty Chief of Staff, 280,
281, 283

Berlin Airlift, 152-55, 162-224;
Combined Airlift Task Force
Commander, 186-89; honors,
223

education, 5; West Point, 6-7
Ferrying Command (World War II),

11-12, 19-28
Ferrying Division, Air Transport

Command, 28-42, 50-51
India-China Division, Air Transport

Conunand (Hump Airlift), 43-

135 passim; relations with Gen.

Chennault (14th Air Force),

340 / INDEX

Tunner, William H. (cont)

116-24; postwar activities, 138-
49

Korea (Far East Force Combat Cargo
Command), 229-64

military career, summary, 8-10

Military Air Transport Service: Dep-
uty Commander, 156, 159-62,
226-29; Conwnander, 281-317

Orient Project, 137-38, 144-48, 149-
51

observations and recommendations re

future military airlift, 320-32
United States Air Forces in Burope,
commander, 265-80
Twining, Gen. Nathan P., 227, 316

United States Air Forces in Europe

(USAFE), 265-80, 329
command function in Berlin Airlift,

183, 189-97 passim
community relations program under

Tunner, 268-71, 280
morale problems under Timner, 277-

79

United States Chamber of Commerce,

291, 299, 300
United States Military Academy, West

Point, 6, 326-27
United States Navy, participation in

Berlin Airlift, 214-15
United States Strike Command (STRI-

COM), 284, 290, 309, 327-28

Vandenberg, Gen. Hoyt, 161, 162-63,

166, 226, 229, 251
Vincent, Casey, 121
Vinson, Rep. Carl, 305
von Rohden, Maj. Gen. Hans D., 183-
84

Vosseller, Commander James O., 215

WAFS; see Women*s Auxiliary Ferry-
ing Squadron
Walker, Lt. Gen. Walton H., 242, 259

Walters, Capt. Bill, 42
wasp's; see Women Auxiliary Service
Pilots

Wavell, Gen. Sir Archibald, 78

Weather

Berlin Airlift, 172, 194,209
Hump, 44, 73-75, 87, 103, 113
India, 106

Korean airlifts, 239-40
Wedemeyer, Lt Gen. Albert C, 114,

120, 121, 134, 137, 138, 145,

149, 161, 162
Westover Field, 165

Wheeler, Capt Dan, 43, 44, 45, 50, 86,
97

Wheeler, Gen. R. A., 145, 149

White, Lt. CoL Robert Bruce, 65-66,

73, 93-94, 132, 164
White, Theodore, quoted, 56
White, Gen. Thomas, 289, 305-6
Whittaker, Lt James C, 30-32
Wiesbaden, 157, 159, 166, 170, 172,

173, 176, 186, 191, 201, 209, 219,

266

Willauer, Whiting, 150-51
Williams, Air Marshal, 188, 209
Witt, Pvt. Paul, 76
Wohni-do, 232

Women Auxiliary Service Pilots

(WASP'S), 37-39
Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron

(WAFS), 36-37
Wonsan, 235, 236, 237
World Air Freight, Inc., 155-56
World War II
Ferrying Command, 11-12, 19-28
Ferrying Division, ATC, 28^2
India-China Division, ATC, 43-135
Wounded and sick, evacuation of; see

Aeromedical evacuation
Wunstorf, 210

Yalu River, 242, 261

Yonpo Airfield, 255, 256, 258, 259, 260

* U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OmCE: IMS

-441-387/M412